“What do you do when you run out of ideas?” my civil servant Dad asked when he worried about me working as an artist. Use picture archives, that’s what.
A working artist needs pictorial reference as a tool for inspiration, for seeing visual connections not made before, or for models to draw from. Inventing images, drawing constructions out of the blue, is helped if you’ve got a few aids.
My bookshelves are lined with field-tested books that I crib from while working in the studio. I use them as creative inspiration. Small books will do. Like any postage stamp book. Mine cost me 25
cents at a street sale. Stamps in general give good art-ref; they’re very graphic and basic, these vignettes and symbols of the world.
