Making of: Crop Sigil & Terrarion

Hello fine folks of the internet and good people all around, this week it's time for the first installment of "Making of:" where we talk about how we go about making some of the things we do, pretty self explanatory huh? The goal of these is not to talk about the exact nitty gritty when it comes to brush size or which brush we used unless it's super relevant somehow but more the design choices involved. This week with the coming of Eldritch Moon in Magic: The Gathering I thought it would be cool to show the two pieces I have in that set, Crop Sigil and Terrarion (like the title, get it?). These pieces were a lot of fun to paint but also a real struggle since I was changing techniques at the time.  Some general info beforehand:
Art Director: Cynthia Sheppard
Resolution: 8000 x 5466 (or something close to it anyway)
Programs: Photoshop CC, Modo with a hint of Daz.
Machine: PC Win10, Core i7, 32GB Ram, GTX970
But enough intro, let's get to it!

well, almost all...

Crop Sigil

Let's start with the official brief:

ART DESCRIPTION:
Setting: Innistrad
Color: Green spell
Location: In the farmlands of Gavony (see 37B, 38)
Action: Show a view from the top of a barn, looking down at some FIELDS OF CROPS where CULTIST PATTERNS have been BURNED—sort of like "crop circles," but using the shapes of the cultist symbols on 95. The result is a pattern of blackened, burned lines in otherwise healthy, green crops.
Focus: The patterns in the fields.
Mood: Weird stuff is happening here...

Ooooh! I remember when reading this for the first time I got really excited, this was a great opportunity to try out my new, and horrible, 3D skills. At this stage I was also asking for some other stuff than just lands so getting this was great. Dark mood, cool angle AND fire? Color me 30 hours lighter because Imma spend some time on this!

First things first, the 3D sketch.

Now for this I made the whole barn with my potato 3D skills and placed a few cameras so I could figure out which angle worked best. I wanted enough room for the field and the burning sign but at the same time I wanted to connect it to the viewer and the farmers. The people of Innistrad are a funny bunch and I knew they were going to go through some rough times, burning one of their fields felt like adding insult to injury and I wanted to show this.

After a few in between steps (which you can see if you scroll down) I reached this stage which is a important one. Right now the burning sign is still a bit weird; it's stretched incredibly far and I was struggling getting the sky in. All elements in a painting, especially one that has to read on such a small scale, have to serve a very specific purpose. I was pretty happy about the colors, a little moody and dark! This would come back to bite me though, did not have enough range!

And the sky was like: 

Now that the sky is gone it's time to make sure the viewer doesn't fall off the canvas. Innistrad is this weirdly claustrophobic place (and not the only phobia!) so I decided to put a tower on the left border. Normally we read left to right and gradients dark to light; reversing this doesn't often happen. It's why good guys ride in on screen left to right and bad guys right to left because it feels more jarring when bad guys do that. So, putting a tower on the left means the viewer cant go back that way and it feels a little bit more claustrophobic. The angular roofs, and triangles as a whole, are also considered more aggressive shapes. These counter the circular shape of the crop sigil and again emphasize a little bit of the dire situation. It's true that almost all roofs are triangular so this could be seen as artsy fartsy &*#*(@ but in this case it's all about how many are placed and where.

Want some fire with that smoke? Getting a little atmosphere going! Also, tower on the left has disappeared! It's important to note that during the whole process things get toggled on and off constantly. Doing this, including flipping your canvas and previewing it on a card, is important to keep a fresh eye and to check if your composition is actually any good. Adding details and noise is always cool so I just did some of that. Right now was also the time to think more about the setting; what kind of soil was it? Has it rained? What equipment do they use? Are they building something? How long did the barn go unattended? What kind of crops are they? Asking these questions helps a lot when thinking of new details, like the cart and it's tracks and some building materials. Also; when leaves and crops are really wet the smoke is more white which is what I wanted, small things like that help!

And now for some final touches...

My buddy Victor helped me get a character in there which really tied the painting together. The tower on the left is also back in, yay! Add some shadows etc. So this whole piece is about jarring angles, shapes moving against each other in harsh ways and muted tones versus the rounded shapes of the sigil and the sharp high saturated orange of the fire.

Roundup:
So here is what I like and don't like about this piece.

Pro's:

• I like the angle / composition, it shows exactly what I want
• Addition of character added a new layer of depth to this piece
• The light and dark helped

Cons:

• Angles on the roof are too sharp, need to use less polygonal lasso tool
• Some of the colors / contrast is wack. It's all over the place! Blurgh
• Some of the textures in there make absolutely no sense. Just, none. Just weird noise

Here is a GIF which for some reason doesn't loop (just open it in a new browser tab if it doesn't work)

Terrarion

Aawwwwww yeah, as far as fun cards to do go this rocketed into the top 5. Artifact, lands, doesn't get a whole lot better than that. On top of all that it was actually a reprint of a card from one of my favorite blocks, Ravnica. 
The brief:
Setting: Innistrad
Color: Colorless artifact
Location: On a table or windowsill (precise location unimportant)
Action: Show a small TERRARIUM shaped sort of like a glass lantern, with an elaborate base and lid. Inside is a WHOLE LANDSCAPE in miniature, including ALL FIVE terrain types: Plains, Islands, Swamp, Mountains, and Forest. (For example, we see a coastline in the front, with a swampy area at one end of it, then an expanse of plains, then forest covering the lower slopes of a mountain range in the background.) The landscape is too big to be contained in this small container—the mountains seem to fade into the distance far beyond where the back of the terrarium would be.
Focus: The terrarium.
Mood: This is an exotic and mysterious item, bending the rules of space to give access to mana of any color.

Look at the brief, it's a thing of beauty. Clear but still with challenges, just what a artist needs. The moment I read this brief I had a clear idea of what I wanted, it's pretty rare because normally I have doubts and go back and forth quite a bit. 

First, a terrible 3D model so I would get the perspective right. I tried freehanding it but when I wanted to rotate the camera twice it meant redrawing everything. Uncool man. Uncool. The model was made in Modo with the dude posed in Daz then also imported into Modo. I grew up using Maya and Sketchup (which I used a lot for Forza Horizon 2) but Modo has a incredible renderer and easy light setup that works wonders for exteriors so I went with that (also because Chase Stone uses it and he's so good. #imitation)

Well, that sketch pretty much is the final piece already, like I said, clear vision. It was important to get all the values right so I actually stuck with greyscale longer than I normally do. These sketchlines are something I do all the time, they don't really show up in the WIP's but I constantly draw over my own work in lines to see if I can't push the design / painting. I also wanted this piece to be super ornamental like suggested in the brief so I did some research on Art Nouveau bronze and brass decorations. The technique used would be a mold so it would always be a bit crude. The carving in the top would not be mold but cut plate so it could be much more fine.

Not something I do a lot, keep the painting greyscale for so long. The process of using a color layer to fill everything in like some of the greats do (Tyler Jacobson and Adrian Smith) is stupidly difficult. I mean, just dumb. You think it's easy but then after 10 hours you just want to torch your PC. However, I did it and by a miracle it worked out.

Oh look at that fast forward. It's... erm. What's a good movie where they travel to the future? Not demolition man because he was frozen, that doesn't count. Anyway, yay! One of the fun parts in working on this image was that I could really focus on 1 area. Everything inside the Terrarion and the Terrarion itself would receive a lot of detail and the rest not so much. It helped me focus and get a lot done. Sometimes I get totally lost in a ocean of detail and it doesn't really benefit the painting a lot. Over the course of the next 6 months (and I'm talking August 2015 till about February 2016) I was going back and forth with this process a lot. It's something I'm still not really comfortable with to date but it's getting better. Artistic growth, yay!

Mixer brush is your friend. That is all. Flipping it because I want the chromatic flare to be really obvious and one of the last things you see. Trapping it in dark also means that it's not super easy for the reader to go out meaning you keep staring at it.

It isn't a complete article without cats!

All right, roundup time.

Pro's:

• Nice distribution of detail, was a first, liking it.
• COLORS! Color contrast is working out pretty well.
• Readability. Very easy to see whats going on.

Cons:

• Still too loose in some points, up close this piece is a disaster
• The perspective is forced weirdly because of the angle of the chair which makes the whole thing look lob sided. #cantunsee
• Even tho it reads the angle is still a bit so,so. Maybe could've added more drama.

OKGIFTIME. If it doesn't loop just open it in a new browser. I will fix this at some point!

Well that's it for this week. If you have any questions on some specifics just give a shout in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them. It's hard to know in how much detail I should go. 

- Titus

The long road: My time at wizards (so far)

“Dear Reader,

I’d like to show you samples of my artwork. I’ve been around as a concept artist for the AAA games industry for 3 years and a professional illustrator for roughly the same time. Many of my friends encouraged me to send my work to you for review so here it is.
I’ll spare you my backstory but I hope you like my work as much as I do your games,”

— Me, July 2013

This is the last email I sent to the artdrop for Wizards of the Coast before I got a job. It was sent in July 2013. My first email was sent in the summer of 2010 (I discontinued that email so I don't have the originals anymore unfortunately!) I got a very kind email back which, in a nutshell, said I might hear back but also might not. It was the same one I had received for the last 3 years, no worries I thought. Keep working and send another email in a few months. Little did I know...

“Hi Titus,
Im wondering if you would be interested/available in working on some Magic cards.
I have a wave of art going out shortly and I would love to try you on some cards.
our turn around is 7 weeks per card.

please let me know
thank you,”

— Wizards Art Director, October 2013

And can I just say, that was pretty much the best day ever. I literally started shaking and crying. Really good news will do that! Now, my story with Wizards and the long road to get there is nothing special. A lot of great artists I know have had similar experiences and I encourage you to read up on those or catch a talk about it from people like Jesper Ejsing (his story is amazing!) but, since I'm writing here you'll get my version. The point of it is though, nothing comes easy, not even for the best of us. 

That first assignment

My first set, Yaaaaaay!

I get a lot of questions about the pipeline when working for Wizards on Magic, one of the most common ones is about what the assignments look like, how much info we get and so forth. Well, here you go:

ART DESCRIPTION:
Setting: KHANAR
Clan: Temur
Color: Red-aligned land
Location: See below
Action: Show a wide shot of an arctic mountain range with active volcanoes, like p. 143-144. In the distance we see some indication of a Temur camp, constructed from hides and dragon bones.
Focus: The mountainous landscape
Mood: Unforgiving wilderness. This is nature at its harshest.
Notes:

That was the first brief I received for the mountain of Khans of Tarkir. Besides shaking uncontrollably with excitement and fear there also were some sketches to be done. Now this is a client I'd been after for years and I felt I couldn't disappoint them but at the same time I was working for Playground games on Forza Horizon 2. It was going to be a very busy time! Because of copyright issues I can't show all the sketches I did for each card, but there were roughly 5-8 each (nowadays I do less) Here is the mountain with what would be the final composition.

The mountain wasn't even the only card I got assigned to do! Here is the full lineup:

Looking back I cringe so much. The quality, the compositions. It hurts! It can be done so much better! Honestly, what they saw in my work beats me but I couldn't be more grateful. Sometimes you shouldn't question good things coming your way and just roll with it. In the future I will do a write-up for a specific magic piece as well so you get to see the whole process. 
After this initial burst a lot happened. Every single day I was convinced I wouldn't hear anything back. The panic is real. Funny thing, after talking to a lot of other MTG artists they experience the same thing, even after a few years. That crushing feeling; "Is this the day I don't hear back, when the assignments stop?". But, lo and behold, I was getting more assignments.

On my way to my first GP - Seville

A lot of stuff happened. My first Grand Prix, Seville. Fate reforged, Dragons of Tarkir and after that Battle for Zendikar (Giant shoutout to Sam for getting me some insane stuff, I said it a 100 times but I cant thank you enough!). It was around this time where another ridiculously cool thing happened.

Concept Push

So Wizards does a whole lot of things before they send out assignments, one of them is creating a style guide. This is a intense sprint where a whole bunch of people come together and brainstorm for a few weeks, laying the foundations. Later this is polished and molded into a coherent style guide that serves as reference for the artists. I was fortunate enough to get a invite and be in the room when they did "Barrel" (Codenames are awesome!) These were the most intense and amazing 3 weeks ever. Now, I know, so far it's a summary of how awesome my art life is but I'll get to the bad part in the end.  But first some more cool stuff! Muwhahahahah.

Here is a summary of stuff that happened which I can disclose which have nothing to do with Magic:

• At night the aircon was off, so we basically melted.
• A cleaning lady sort of knew Victor, and told him to stay in school (something close anyway)
• We visited Mount Rainier, I got a awesome sweater there and, it was the most amazing and quiet place ever.
• Victor was too afraid to jaywalk in a town of 3,000 people at 10:30 PM that we waited for a traffic light for about 15 minutes.
• I hit a new low in insecurity being around insanely good artists I didn't know very well yet. 
• I discovered I'm not a huge fan of Applebees.
• Downtown Seattle is super cool.
• When you walk down the street to go somewhere instead of driving people look at you funny.
• Vodka + Emergen-C is actually not a bad drink. Dangerous, but good.
• Everybody at Wizards is a Rockband / Guitar hero legend.
• Peanutbutter M&M's and Yellow Nr 5 are super delicious.
• Jetlag got me addicted to coffee.
• Sunchips rule, Sweden - please start importing. Thanks.

Some tips for you!

Now, I wouldn't want to waste all this know-how so here are some useful tips if you want to apply for Wizards. Since this is a bullet point kind of post I'll just beef that up with some more:

• Learn to play the game. Seriously. Don't say you want to work for them oh so badly without even knowing about the game! Also, it's crazy fun, addictive and super difficult.
• Make fake cards. Come up with a brief in the same structure as I listed above and stick to it. That way you can show your process. Big categories are: Land, spell, creature, artifact. 
• Look for similarities in the way cards are setup. MTG has a very specific way of doing things, if you can figure it out you've proven you've got the brains and skills to make it.
• Talk to other MTG artists to figure out what they feel is most important in a card. Listen! Don't just assume.
• Work on your own signature style, don't do the popular thing and photobash everything. I used to do it, now I kinda not like it anymore and paint almost every card. You'll see those in 2017!
• Keep submitting work but not too fast, wait a few months. People working there are crazy busy! So just keep at it! Remember, it took me 3 years.
• Get feedback from the MTG community, they are your friends. Also, they know the lore best.

Some other important things to note; art directors are busy people. Emphasis on people! Be nice and be patient. How would you feel if you get a thousand emails a day, and a thousand more the next day from people asking why you haven't replied yet. On your road to becoming a artist for Wizards, or a better artist in general, listen to feedback and lose that stubbornness. When people with lots of experience tell you something they don't do it to hurt you or keep you down, I hope...
And most of all pursue this for the right reasons. I'll admit, this is somewhat of a more puritan way of thinking but I feel strongly that this isn't a job you should chase for the money or fame. The Magic community is a very nice one, it has ups and downs of course, but it's united by the love for the game. There are tons of other really cool clients that pay well so if your heart truly isn't in it, maybe consider a alternative.

These days I spend most of my time working for Wizards and loving every single minute of it. But, in the spirit of this blog here are some of the low points which I hit during my career:

• In 2010 I hit a low point, I quit painting for 6 months.
• I applied for 5 art schools 2 years in a row and got denied all 10 times.
• Before I got a job I sent out 178 applications spread over 4 months, I got 1 reply that was positive.
• I had my first burnout at 19 which wrecked about 4 months of my life.
• In 2014 I was on the border of a depression and I had to quit my job and move.
• I was very stubborn and lost a bunch of friends because of my stubbornness.
• I was very stubborn and arrogant and lost a bunch of job offers because of this.
• In the past I misjudged jobs, failed, and never got called back.
• I've been scammed and worked for "free" because of it.

The list goes on and on. So remember, it's not all fun and games. It's about falling, getting up and going at it again. I read a quote; Art is easy, life is hard. And being in this industry and doing this for the last 6 years I couldn't agree more. I still have that same relentless drive to get better and keep pushing myself and I hope you have that too. I'll leave you with one of the first paintings I've ever done as a sign that you can do it as long as you work hard and stay true to yourself. You're welcome.
 

- Titus

A final thanks goes out to all the Wizards art directors, you know who you are, for supporting me and giving me a shot. To all the people I worked with during the Barrel push and the fun shenanigans that were had. To my best friends Robin and Benny who supported me for the last 8 years with good feedback and terrible puns. My girlfriend Suzanne who is relentless in her support and gave me the guts to fail, get up, and try again. My parents and family who believed, and still do. And last but not least the art community who was at points cruel, relentless, motivational, supportive and ever on my heels. I couldn't have done it without you.

Pressure Cooker

“Could you just.. please... shut up?”

— Rational part of your brain talking to the asshole part

Not everything here on Project Discovery is about hard facts and scientific evidence, some of it, like this, comes from personal experience. That being said I have a nagging suspicion almost every artist has "asshole brain" in one way or another. In fact, I think everyone just might have. So let's take a moment to properly complain about this phenomenon and maybe we can help each other out.

“Hey, you know, you’ve worked suuuuuper hard on this piece. Really gave it your all! But that painting that other person did is still like, a billion times better. Just saying.”

— Asshole brain

Sound familiar? If you are a fully dysfunctional artist it should! (I have yet to find a fully functioning artist) Before we get started let me summarize the different archetypes of insecurities, fears, frustrations and general asshole'ish (?) brain things I encounter. Let me know if any sound familiar:

1. Everyone else is better
2. I'm a fraud! In reality I suck!
3. I cant think of any cool stuff. I must not be creative at all
4. You keep doing the same thing over and over, that's dumb
5. If you miss 1 second of possible painting time the world will leave you behind. No play time for you!
6. Nobody saw my stuff, this must mean its terrible
7. I don't think you have your own style. Wow, boring much?
8. Hey look at that food thing on TV! Bet you want it now, especially because you cant get it because it's like 1 AM and you are still working. COME ON! Every. single. time

Now there are many, many, many more (luckily?) but most of them are derived from the big hitters above. Whichever one of those is loudest or the most frequent they all have one thing in common. Whether you like it or not they exert pressure on you. You exert pressure on yourself. I know you don't want to but you are making life more difficult on yourself than it has to be. Trust me, I know. It is my main struggle. I can go from being super happy to feeling bummed out all because of that little voice in my head. This mental energy drain is bad. Real eye opener right?

Here's the thing, we all have a reserve of mental energy. In the previous blog I talk about potato brain, a type of atrophy which occurs when you don't receive enough stimuli. The same effect applies, the lack of input drains your mental energy. The level of mental energy you have, which is comparable to physical energy, determines how long you can focus, how much resistance you have to negative thoughts and so forth. Long term negativity and lack of input can therefor seriously harm your creative process and breaking out of it isn't easy. One of the key things that helped me fight this is to recognize "drain triggers". I'm sure there is a fancy real world word for it but I'm not that smart. When I realize what's going on I try to identify how big of a impact it's having on me, so I treat it like a weather prediction. Level 3 mental storm coming! (and now I'm worried that sounds way less cool than I hoped it would...) Anyway, once you realize what's coming you can prepare. Everything has counter measures, such as taking a walk, doing something else like read a awesome blog (Yeah, I went there) play a game, get some "organic fruit and vegetable smoothies"  or you know, donuts. Hopefully your solutions won't be unhealthy for you so maybe work in a gym routine in every once in a while*.

So why take this stuff seriously? Why get all touchy feely with yourself? Because if you don't you can break down and stop working all together and not have a clue why. "Art block", more like "I dont know myself well enough so I cant really figure out whats wrong and therefor not fix it-block" You can get stuck but the least you can do is know why. The pressure we artists put on ourselves in ridiculous, mostly because of our insecurities and, the overwhelming notion that art, aside from the few lucky ones, is not a profession that yields you great and consistent income. You have to fight every single day to stay relevant like B rated comedy shows. And boy do we know it. If staying relevant and therefor employed was just about being good at art it'd be one thing, but it's not about that anymore. It's about how relevant you can stay in a competitive environment. A signature style that has to resonate with the taste of the masses combined with a nice personality and brimming with originality. It's like constantly living in one of those American drug commercials where people constantly smile, laugh and hug their dogs even though they are on a ridiculous amount of medication and are apparently not worried that the side-effects of the sleeping aid causes hallucinations and halitosis! 

“If staying relevant and therefor employed was just about being good at art it’d be one thing, but it’s not about that anymore. It’s about how relevant you can stay in a competitive environment.”

So yeah, the pressure is huge. I feel it, you feel it, and I bet our non artist readers can relate. For art however there is a upside. In a way that pressure can push us forward and motivate us into getting better at what we do. Turning pressure into thrust is highly important. Work on finding the "drain triggers", develop a part of your brain that is better at kung-fu than the asshole part and kick it's ass every now and again. Don't let the pressure break you, turn it into thrust and use it to soar to great heights (this is a metaphor, do not jump off of shit.) Vent excess energy so the thrust doesn't move you so fast you tear apart. Get outlets, make sure you don't get potato brain and please, please, be honest to yourself.

Here is a list of stuff that's perfectly OK to do when you feel the drain trigger come on. This is stuff I do, maybe you can get some inspiration from it too:

1. Call a bad day a bad day and stop painting. Tell your friends you have a bad day, they can help!
2. Start playing games that make you feel better. Like, set an AI to 100% idiot mode and then trash it. Stupid computer... walked right into my rocket.
3. Make apple crumble
4. Offer me some apple crumble. 
5. Take a walk and think about nothing else. <- this one is impossible. Thinking Dark souls 3 is hard. Pfsh
6. Take a long shower and think about the problem. (90% of the time this is composition for me btw)
7. Watch a movie that's in the same genre as what you are working on.
8. Drink "organic fruit and vegetable smoothies"
9. Work out**
10. And most importantly, hang out with your boy/girl friend / regular platonic friends. Ask them how they are doing and ask if you can help them with something. Not being stuck in your own head and not thinking about yourself is easiest when you genuinely want to help someone else. Bonus, it feels pretty good.

So. Sit back, relax. Don't blow up. You're doing just fine.

- Titus

* I never go to the gym and personally think it might just be the worst thing ever.

** seriously, I never do it. Sweating next to a bunch of strangers who are also sweating and might want to talk to you? Really? I don't need that in my life, it's stressful enough as is. Kthnx.

The inspiration conundrum

“Where does your inspiration come from?”

— Literally everyone

It's the most commonly asked question in interviews and people alike asking about art in general. A very innocent question, or is it? I read somewhere that if you make a dramatic statement people are more likely to stay tuned for whatever follows, so I hope it worked because I'd like to talk a bit about inspiration.

So what is it about this question that so many of us artists struggle with? Is it the fact that we've been asked so many times and can't be bothered with it anymore? Or is it because we ourselves struggle to answer the question in a meaningful way? As a matter of fact I think the entire question is flawed. 

Here is the thing that I struggle with in this particular instance. Inspiration is dealing with stimuli that trigger creative processes, but the creative process to many is so elusive and intangible that defining it in a broad statement is difficult. My creative process switches constantly, this is not to be confused with the process of how I make my work or how I set myself up to do that work in a practical sense, i.e how I arrange my desk and what software I use. Parts of the creative process in the way it's finally executed and how it manifests itself in a painting is always the same. The tool, digital painting in this case, remains the same. It's done on a computer, behind a desk, most likely after careful planning. Inspiration therefor weighs in much earlier in the creative process, in the stage where everything is still very much up in the air and up for grabs. This space in your mind where you try to focus on a blurred image. Grabbing and pulling in many ideas and references trying to make sense of this blurred image, the idea. In this space we have to look for inspiration and this is where the question goes terribly awry. A quick note by the way, the art of sketching is incredibly important in this stage. It serves as a sort of auto-focus on a image, it helps clarify what you are looking for. Inspiration in this stage could means something completely different than the inspiration that had you arrive at the blurred image to begin with. A often missed point in this is image progression or evolution.

---

The notion:

Artists sit around and wait for inspiration. When they find it, they make cool stuff. Maybe they listen to music or something.

The thing is though; what happens when you (and I'm talking to non artists right now) listen to music, or look at art, or go for a run. Do you get inspired to create masterpieces of art? No? Nor do we artists, generally speaking. There are presumably exceptions to the rule but I have yet to find one.

The reality:

Art is hard work. An amount of hard work that if you were fully aware of it before hand you might not get into it. Such is at least true for trying to stay 'competitive', for lack of a better word, in the art community. But more on that later. It's hard work to improve and that piece of white paper staring at you can be a terrifying thing. The core however to this whole thing lies in the drive to get better and, right next to it lies curiosity.

---

Curiosity is a curious thing. In many cases it's the silent engine that allows for us to push through boring moments and touch upon some new information. In the book FLOW the process of increasing complexity is described as being stimulated by new things. This process allows for more brain activity and is important to prevent a form of brain slumber that can occur when doing menial day to day tasks, a.k.a 'The daily drag'. Getting these impulses therefor is hugely important. HUGELY! Get it yet? The extremely short version is: If you don't experience new things your brain turns into a potato. 

Our curiosity drives us to research new things. New things keep the brain active and interested, in turn making us curious about more things. We incorporate this into the creative process when we turn our research focus towards something we would like to, in this case, paint. Everything then becomes about adding something to the painting and the process broadens. It is here where we stumble upon the falsity of the inspiration statement. For me, it is really all about curiosity and how to stay motivated enough to stay curious and continue the creative process.

“Inspiration really is all about curiosity and, curiosity in turn is based largely on the energy to stay motivated and to learn new things.”

So where does that leave us? Should we all stop asking the question where inspiration comes from? The answer is, yes. Absolutely. I can't even emphasize it enough. Please, stop it. I get it though, it's not your fault. You mean well! So don't worry, I don't blame you. A very good alternative would be: "How do you stay motivated?". 

- Titus

P.s The answer is a mixture of terrible food, music, self loathing, crushing self inflicted pressure and energy drinks.