8 Unconventional Sources of Inspiration That Fuel Artistic Work

My job as a landscape artist involves translating the unique way I see the world (and its shapes, colours and moods) onto canvas.

Purely representational artwork doesn’t speak to me in the same way that a more abstracted, felt interpretation of a place does. I want to soak up whichever landscape I’m focused on, become absorbed and obsessed by it, and then distil that experience into paint.

Walking gives me that absorption. I’ll sketch on location, and carry the feeling home. Back in the studio, I’m not painting what I saw as much as how it felt to be back there.

My particular obsession is the curved line where the sea meets sand on a Scottish beach. I paint it over and over again. The shape itself barely changes (that long, sweeping arc) but the weather, the light and the colours are always different.

You can see the curve in lots of my paintings, both recent and older.

There’s something I find important about this for today’s world. Scotland’s wild coastlines and mountains are extraordinary, and I think we can forget that when we’re moving too fast. That attentiveness to nature, to that shoulder-dropping cheek-tingling, heart-warming calm that it gives us, is what I hope comes through in the finished work.

I paint landscapes and listen to music while I paint. The structure and themes of what I listen to inspire and influence my paintings. The way the sound connects with the colours I’m using or the way I make a brush mark seems to bring greater expression and emotion into the piece. I will even put certain songs or bands on repeat if it seems to gel with the piece I’m working on.

Some of the ways this is translated into oil painting is making marks in time to the music, pausing to reflect during a slow part of a song, really feeling the emotions in a song and connecting that back to how I felt about being in the landscape I’m painting. Looking back on past pieces, I can sometimes remember what I was listening to while working on certain parts of the painting. I also work alone, and being immersed in this other creative genre seems to remind me that I’m part of a big collective of creatives, and it’s about so much more than just me in my studio.

Old buildings are my greatest inspiration in designing. Not big ones either, but run-down terraced houses, and deserted barns and reclamation yards full of salvaged frames.

I grew up in a family joinery business where my father used to construct windows, staircases, and doors for buildings that were more than a century old. So I had only ever seen timber that had already lived a full life before we ever touched it.

My exposure to it gave me a completely new way of viewing wood. I stopped seeing grain patterns as flaws and started seeing them as a record of how a tree actually grew, reacted to weather, and carried weight over decades.

And that brings me to the heart of the real work. I always carry a sketchbook and draw on the spot whenever I visit a reclamation yard, before the details fade. The grain direction, the knots, how a plank has bowed over the years, these observations directly influence how I orient the timber when cutting a shelf. If the grain of a board is pronounced and the board is cut diagonally, I make sure to design the cut so that the pattern looks intentional rather than accidental.

Seven or eight out of every ten shelves we ship carry a character mark of a kind I first spotted in a yard somewhere. So customers end up with something they never asked for – a mark I chose to retain. That is what no software or trend report could ever replicate.

The dance floor is the unconventional source I keep coming back to. People tell you what the room needs before they say a word, through the first person who moves, the group that hangs back, or the table that suddenly starts singing along. I translate that into DJing by changing the next three songs, not the whole set, because small shifts keep the night alive without losing the thread. The room is not just reacting to the music, it is helping shape it.

Years of motocross racing taught me that graphics aren’t just stickers; they are a visual extension of a bike’s mechanical flow and a rider’s style under pressure. My unconventional source of inspiration is the physical “roost” and wear patterns of the track—I look at how dirt and debris interact with a bike’s surface to determine where design lines should break for maximum visual impact.

I translate this into our medium by prioritizing high-visibility “sharpness” and durability in our premium materials, ensuring the kit looks as good mid-race as it does in the pits. We focus on specific components like fork guards and swing arms, treating these high-impact areas as essential canvases that must balance aesthetics with the brutal reality of the sport.

Through our iCREATE platform, we give this design control back to the riders, allowing them to use professional vector tools to translate their personal “on-track” personality into a physical reality. Whether it’s a full motocross kit or a custom seat cover through our partnership with Thrill Seekers, the goal is to create a design that feels as fast and durable as the machine it’s stuck to.

I’ve always found inspiration in the way light interacts with everyday surroundings. The soft glow of morning sun through a window, or the sharp contrasts of streetlights at night—these moments are a constant reminder of the power of subtle details.

This observation is something I’ve channeled directly into our work. We strive to design backdrops that don’t just capture a scene, but a feeling. By focusing on how light creates mood and depth, we aim to create products that help photographers transform an ordinary composition into something unforgettable. It’s about more than just a background; it’s about setting the stage for a story.

One unconventional source of inspiration for me is watching what happens after a product leaves our hands.

At Ubackdrop, we design for the final look, but some of our best ideas come from setup friction: wrinkled fabric after transit, rushed event installs, tight venue spaces, or customers trying to make one backdrop work across multiple uses. I remember seeing how often customers needed something that looked polished on camera but was also fast to assemble and easy to repack. That pushed us to think less like decorators and more like problem-solvers.

Our creative process is often sparked by limitations. Constraints like shipping, setup time, and reusability influence our designs just as much as aesthetics. We turn real-world challenges into design choices, improving both how our backdrops look and how they function. This approach has led to some of our most significant innovations.

I believe that if you’re creating for events, you have to treat logistics as part of the art form. Paying attention to the entire user journey, from unboxing to breakdown, is where you find the best ideas.

My background in audio engineering provides an unconventional framework for how I build marketing systems and brand strategies. I treat messaging like a sound mix, where the goal is to maximize the “signal” of a value proposition while eliminating the “noise” of market hype.

I translate this into my medium by focusing on the frequency of sales psychology and audience attention. Just as an engineer ensures every instrument has its own space in a track, I work with clients to ensure their strategy, data, and creative channels are perfectly synced rather than clashing.

For our partners in tech and healthcare, we apply these principles to create connected systems that turn abstract ideas into measurable growth. We move away from vanity metrics and treat marketing as a commercial function that must produce a clear, audible result in the bottom line.