Today's bit of inspirational eye candy...

I've been working on an illustration which features an older woman in a "Norma Desmond" sort of turban.

I'd sketched the turban out pretty easily at first, but when it came time to refine the drawing I realized that I didn't quite have enough information about how such an item of clothing is actually constructed to do it justice. I could conjure up the image I wanted to convey but I needed to refine that vision with some actual data.
   I'm too young to have actually seen such a turban up close on anyone. My Mom is only 65 and she wouldn't be caught dead in such a thing and my own Grandma was fond of appropriately Ozarky big hair right up to and (thanks to the funeral home and the wonders of Aquanet) well after the day she died.

I decided to root around a bit on Google to see if I could come up with some better photographic references for the item. My first thought was to try out "Norma Desmond" as a search term. That got me some interesting, but ultimately non-useful pictures like this one..

There didn't seem to be any good pictures of Nora in her traditional turban. Then I decided to try for Sally Field in "Soapdish" since I remembered that one of the plotlines in that comedy involved the writers putting Sally Field's character in a turban. Again, really amusing pictures came up, but in terms of the kind of turban I wanted, ultimately not useful.

Finally I went with "vintage" and "old Hollywood" in combination with turbans and there I finally hit the jackpot - I found quite a few good quality, well lit photographs of women wearing the exact sorts of turbans that I wanted to use in my illustration.

I could've declared myself satisfied at that point, but I'd been working hard all morning and I decided to follow the white Google rabbit further down the endless rabbit hole to see what I could find. Following my turban pictures from one site to another, one link to another I found wonderful places I would never have discovered any other way.

Like this blog, for example: Couture Millenery
It's all about couture hats and is full of beautifully photographed, highly artistic, absolutely unique hats. Now as an illustrator whose work tends to veer heavily towards fantasy and imaginary fripparies, I definitely filed this site away for future reference.

I feel that I should carefully clarify here that when I say "reference" that's exactly what I mean. I don't want to use any of the hats on this site as they are, and doing that would be wrong and disrespectful to the artist who has created these hats. I'm using the site purely as a source of inspiration - as a way to start to think about strange and unusual hats in my own imagination, what sorts of hat creations my characters can wear and which color combinations I may want to use.

We do not champion artistic pilferage here at the Atelier! Inspiration is fine, artists ripping off other artists  is not.

Moving on!

I also found this site: Swing Fashionista
This is more of your typical fashionista website, but it skews towards an embrace of the "Classic Hollywood Glamour" aesthetic. It's full of wonderful pictures from both the classic and the contemporary fashion world and is, again, a rich source of inspiration that I can go look at whenever I've got that "Blah. What should I draw? Nothing's coming to me." sort of feeling.

And finally, this site: Kitschy Kitschy Coo
It is only peripherally related to fashion at all, and yet it may be one of my favorite finds during this particular bit of Google long-line fishing. It tags itself as "We tickle your ugly bone." Oh yes, you had me at "ugly bone." This site is full of really bizarre stuff - a  "Happy Hippo" pull toy from the 60's. Old advertisements, slightly off kilter vintage fashion photography, unfortunate staged shots, regretable candids, found photos and stuff that's probably sitting around your local Goodwill just waiting for a home. I could spend way too long looking at this stuff and it's the perfect mix of random that creates such rich fertilizer for the artistic brain.

Staying open and aware of what may show up unexpectedly - even when I'm just trolling around on the internet -  and keeping an eye out for resources that I can stash away for future periods of "creative drought" have both been extremely useful to me in my creative process.
 I've realized that a good percentage of the time what might look to other people like "Rob's not working, he's just noodling around on the internet.." is actually an important part of the creative cycle that's just as necessary (if not more so, actually) than drawing or painting are.
I'm recognizing that I need that time when the mind can just spool and take in new information, new sights, new color combinations, ideas I haven't encountered before etc.
Then, when the next active creative phase comes up, I'm actually ready for it with a lot of new inspiration to draw on and draw from.

And the old lady's turban in the illustration that started this whole thing? It looks DIVINE.