Inspiration

I've noticed artists of all mediums speak of what inspires them. Many times it's nature, or music, or other works of art... movies or stories or moments in life.
I, however, am inspired by line & shape. To get things started when I was working on 'The Shirt', I would use some of the blank space to clean my leaky pen. From the smudges, I'd create shapes. Sometimes those shapes would lead to something tangible, like a monster or some sort of alien foliage.
For Spoonflower's Hand Drawn fabric of the week contest, I created Subconscious Garden. I started it with a bean shape, inspired by some woman's shirt pattern at the park. I'm not sure about how I thought 'bean' since her shirt was a large scale paisley print but I did.

This bean led me into all the other lines. At first I started to think seed pod of something floral, then it became butterfly, then more likely a moth.

This is the finished drawing that I scanned for the pattern. I rolled the paper on some plastic material I had to create the repeat drawing from top to bottom.

I mirrored it left to right to complete the surface design. And then, I noticed the psychedelic skull-flower faces. Even the cyclops sticking out his tongue between the moth's antennae. Now the moth has the illusion it's wings are flapping. I dig it and so did the Spoonflower crowd. In the end, it placed 37th out of 500 entries with 213 votes for Subconscious Garden - A 'Color Me' Fabric. It will be available soon for purchase, the order is processing.