Drawing What I See

I'd like people to think I just draw things off the top of my head; that I approach a blank page with confidence and set to work.  That rarely is the case.  Pinterest and Google Images are generally close by to give me some inspiration and direction, especially Pinterest.  In fact, I usually have collected a whole Pinterest board of images to look at before starting to draw.

Here's a couple of for instances.  You'll see my drawing followed by what I was looking at...

And it's often not just one image I'm drawing from, but like 3 that I use different features of.

I sometimes get so caught up in the original picture that I forget that the whole point is not to copy it exactly but rather to use my hand to create something new. 

(I just love hand-drawn designs, the imperfections are what make it charming and human.)

The only times I work completely from my own head is in something non-representational and usually geometric, like this.

Then, I'm usually just playing with lines and shapes.

So hopefully that's not too disillusioning.  Artists don't create in a vacuum.