From where do you draw inspiration?

Multi choice poll

This is a question which can be answered by any artistic personage.
Skinners, modders, writers, drawers/painters both with mouse and a pencil, poets etc.

Where do you draw you inspiration from?

Is it movies like Starship Troopers, that make you create a universe about demons and aliens?

To give an example I was listening to the first part of Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull, and when the line:

''The poet and the painter casting shadows on the water as the sun plays on the infantry returning from the sea''

came round I grapped my note book and started sketching this is what came out of it:


Sorry for the crappy scanning..


To explain the options.

Work of others mean that if you're a painter and you're inspired by Van Gogh, then it's by a fellow artist.
Or if you as a skinner are appealed by Dirty Peasent shining knighs then you're also inspired by the work a fellow artist.

By books I mean both novels and history books.

Games, both computer and console

well, I basically chose every option except comics... so then it's like, why vote?

in short, I draw my inspiration from life. and I think there are a lot of things that people get inspired by which are not on the list. what about people you meet, conversations you have, a beautiful sunset, a beautiful girl, a nice hike in some nice nature, a year spent travelling in India and Nepal (which I just did), or any other of the trillion things in life which can lead to inspiration???

it's too complex a question/subject, I think, to make a limited poll out of, but in terms of a topic for conversation it's a good one. hope the thread gets going but for me the poll just isn't doin it.

Well, as a writer, I find I've gotten most of my insperation out of my dreams. Creapy as that may seem, I get a lot of good ideas that are sometimes deep, moreoften scary. Of course I have to weed out the complete abusrd things as well.