Inspiration: Where does it come from?

As I sat down today to create a new sketch, I started thinking about inspiration. It is a question that I'm asked quite often, "Where do you get the inspiration for your paintings?" It really is a difficult question to answer. I feel that as an artist, I just absorb my surroundings like a sponge and draw inspiration from literally everything around me. It could be something I see, something I hear, a feeling, a smell...sometimes just the smallest thing can trigger inspiration and I start seeing the painting in my mind. It's such a part of me that it's not something tangible or easy to describe.

While that is one side of where I draw my inspiration from, I do definitely draw my inspiration from more tangible things like movies, books, songs, etc... One big source of inspiration is other artwork. I love browsing www.deviantart.com and seeing all the beautiful work there. Of course, as an artist myself, I understand how important copyright is, so I'm not talking about copying paintings, or characters, or backgrounds or clothing. Even if it wasn't illegal and morally wrong, copying someone else's work doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I want to paint and have the world see my vision, not someone else's.

It is difficult to put into words how the process works for me, but I will try! Oftentimes, I see something, maybe it's a color scheme in someone else's painting and I think, wow, I really love those colors...I wonder how those colors would work incorporated into a witch's outfit with a purple sky in the background? Or maybe I see a painting of a mermaid in an underwater grotto and I begin to wonder, if I painted a mermaid in an underwater grotto, what would it look like? What would she be wearing? What colors would I use? What would be around her? It's more that I see something and it sparks my own ideas and allows me to paint my own creation rather than taking someone else's idea and duplicating their creation.

That's just one aspect of my inspiration, but hopefully it gave you a little more insight into where I come up with some of my ideas. No matter what artistic medium you choose, painting, writing, sculpture, etc... you are inspired from somewhere. Where do you draw your inspiration from? Is it difficult for you to put into words?