Campaign Mastery has already hosted the Blog Carnival once this year, but when Scot (who runs the Carnival for us) asked me to fill an empty slot, how could I say no? Especially when I already had a list of carnival subjects to draw on?

So, this is Art-spiration. Pick a painting or drawing and get inspired by it.

It’s that simple.

You could use your chosen image as a metaphor and create a character for your game world to reflect it, or a location, or an adventure. Or you could take the image more literally. Or anything in between.

To help, I have provided 21 images below, many by some the greatest artists of history – but you don’t have to use any of them, you can use this as an excuse to go exploring somewhere like DeviantArt or Pinterest, or an appropriate reference book like the one to the left, on the Brothers Hildebrandt (not many copies left, so shop quickly if interested) — and find your own.

It’s completely up to you.

So, on with the 21 images – most of them in no particular order.
 

Galatea Of The Spheres by Salvadore Dali:

Dali painted this image of his wife as a series of spheres in a three-dimensional lattice – a literal representation of the notion that she was his world. But this image also depicts atomic theory through the prism of renaissance art, according to the artist himself – and who better to describe his source of inspiration?

According to Wikipedia, Dali wanted the painting to be displayed on an easel that had been owned by French painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Messonier, in a suite of three rooms called the Palace Of The Winds in the Dali Museum in Figueres; his wishes were fulfilled, and it remains on display there to this day, though it has at least once been transported to another location (the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia) for display for a limited time.

The name Galatea usually refers to a Sea Nymph of classical mythology who was renowned for her virtue, but other interpretations have been offered.

Dali, of course, is the most renowned member of the surrealist art movement, and many have drawn inspiration from his most famous works, especially the melting clocks of The Persistence Of Memory. He died on January 23, 1989, so his work will be under copyright restrictions until 2073. In addition to sculptures, 3-dimensional objects, designs, and sketches, he is credited with the creation of more than 1600 paintings.

I thought seriously about offering up the melting clocks, but decided that the image was so ubiquitous – it’s practically synonymous with the term “Surreal” – that people might already have wrung as much inspiration from it as they could, and so a different choice might be more useful.
 

Old Man In An Armchair (possibly a portrait of Jan Amos Comenius 1665), by Rembrandt

Rembrandt van Rijn is so famous as an artist that many people will know the name and the occupation of its famous owner without having the faintest idea of his nationality. For the record, he was Dutch, and is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Rembrandt died in 1669 at the age of 63.

Rembrandt’s works include landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes, and animal studies – but he is best known for his portraits, both of others and of himself. In fact, the latter are considered a form of autobiography, constantly reflecting his changing circumstances and moods.

It is now accepted that he produced more than 300 paintings, almost 400 etchings, and around 2000 drawings. Some have attributed more than 600 paintings to him. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that he often had his students copy his works, especially his self-portraits, as part of their education in art. Eliminating as many of these as possible has reduced the number of self-portraits accepted as being by the artist himself from about 90 to 40-odd.

This portrait, presented here in a cropped close-up form, is housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It’s reasonable to expect that it was originally brighter and richer in detail, but it is now partially obscured by varnish that has darkened with age. There are slight differences in the attribution date for the creation of the painting, but it was either 1660 or thereabouts.

His most famous work is The Night Watch, also known as The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, and I almost chose that as my ‘inspirational offering’, but opted for an image whose subject could be from just about any era – but which is full of personality.
 

The Scream, Edvard Munch

If ever a painting needed no introduction, it’s this one – though there are several images that I have selected that probably fall within that classification! The artist, Edvard Munch, is considered one of the pioneers or forerunners of the expressionist art movement, which needs no further explanation after you’ve seen the painting.

The sensational story of its theft and recovery made headlines around the world a few years back.

The Scream has completely overshadowed every other work by the Norwegian Artist, and is one of a handful of images that have extensively infiltrated western cultural awareness (like Dali’s The Persistence Of Memory, mentioned earlier). Three cultural references stand out as evidence of the extent of this recognition: The mask in the Scream movie series was inspired by The Scream, as were (in part) the appearance of “The Silence” in Dr Who, and the emoji for ‘screaming in fear’ is a representation of the principal figure in the painting.
 

Salvator Mundi (cropped closeup) by Leonardo Da Vinci

I was tempted to use Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which is another of those iconic images; I was not tempted at all to offer up Da Vinci’s most famous paintings, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, because they seemed too narrow in focus to be capable of sufficient breadth of interpretation.

Ultimately, I selected this image of Jesus, “Salvator Mundi” is Latin for “Savior Of The World”, because it was sufficiently closely-cropped that it became a generic face, capable of being interpreted in many different ways. In fact, the close-up suggests an entirely different emotional flavor / personality to that of the portrait as a whole.

The painting was thought to be a copy of an original for many years, which had been subjected to overpainting at some point in its history, disguising it’s legitimacy. “Overpainting” is the process of adding layers of paint to “improve” or “repair” a damaged painting. Eventually, it’s nature was discovered and it was restored, but there are still a few who question it’s provenance.

it was sold at auction by Christie’s, New York, in 2017 for US$450.3 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold. You can see the complete image at this link.
 

Dawning – the ‘Queen of the Clippers’ by Montague Dawson

Montague Dawson was a British artist famed for his maritime artworks; his most famous painting depict sailing ships, especially clipper ships and warships of the 18th and 19th centuries. He died in 1973. he is noted for the strict accuracy of the nautical details in his works.

I chose this image because I wanted to include a sailing ship under sail in the range, and this was one of the most expressive. Despite the title, to my eye, the sea itself is the star focal point of the work; the ship is the second most important, but it is dwarfed by the immensity of wind and wave. Others would disagree with this assessment.

There are two different attitudes toward ships by sailors – one is that the ship is more important than the medium through which it sails, and the other is that the medium is more important and the vessel is merely the necessary means of safe immersion within the medium. Which is to say that some sailors love the ship, and others love the sea more.

These attitudes are often reflected in the attitudes of people in sci-fi movies and novels toward space, especially deep space or interstellar space; I see no reason why they would not also apply to those who explore planar spaces and cosmology. For some, the planes would be fascinating in and of themselves, while for others, they are just places, and it’s what you can do there that is more interesting or significant.

For that matter, I can see this being replicated by merchants in a trade caravan – for some, the caravan is just a means to an end, for others it is the mercantile activity that exists only to make it possible for them to live a vagabond life that most would nevertheless consider respectable.

The dichotomy between these perspectives seems perfectly and profoundly represented by this image, and that’s what earns it a place in this collection.
 

The Grove – Monhegan by George Bellows

George Bellows was an American painter with a realist style, best known for his depictions of urban life in New York City. Monhegan is an island in the Gulf of Maine, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. In the mid-19th century, an Artist Colony was founded and by 1890, was well-established. Summer visitors from the New York School Of Art and Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts regularly visited and found inspiration there, including Bellows; this 1911 painting is one result.

There’s a phenomenon in art that is familiar to every painter and anyone else who appreciates the craft: what you see up close is NOT the same as what you see when you view a painting from a distance.

The splashes of color and light blend together to form a photo-realistic impression that vanishes when you get up close and can see how the painting is actually put together. This painting is a great example of this phenomenon, which didn’t really enter art until the impressionists of the 19th century. The ‘old masters’ had a far more realistic style with smooth gradations of tone and color, as shown by the closeup of the Da Vinci earlier.

The big advantages that the more modern style permits is speed, enabling the capture of an impression or the suggestion of motion, in contrast to the almost forced stillness of the older works. The qualities of light are another aspect of reality that is often better expressed through the style of the impressionists, and their successors.

This work was chosen because I thought it important that a landscape be one of the images offered, from a thumbnail of roughly the size of the smaller image; it was only when I saw the larger version that it became clear that this effect was being exhibited.

That means that in addition to its content, this image can be considered symbolic of false appearances and deception in all its guises. A serendipitous bonus that amply justifies it’s presence in this collection of inspirational works.
 

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was a German painter in the 19th-century Romantic Landscape movement, and is generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. According to Wikipedia, he is ‘best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures standing before night skies, morning mists, barren trees, or gothic ruins’.

All of which should be fertile sources of inspiration for fantasy GMs!

Painted around 1817 after Friedrich experienced a hike in the Saxon Switzerland, this is one of Friedrich’s most famous works; I could easily have chosen any of a half-dozen other paintings but there were two compelling reasons for selecting this one.

First, the figure and the landscape are of equal prominence in this painting, which is not always the case in Freidrich’s works; this permits greater variety of inspirations to derive from it. And second, the silhouetted figure is such that with a little imagination, this could almost be a figure in mail, be it chain or plate. The staff or walking stick by the figures side could be a scabbarded sword.
 

Wivenhoe Park, Essex by John Constable

When it comes to bucolic English landscapes, John Constable is the iconic artist. Wikipedia, in describing this painting, offers: ‘Constable’s art is always penetrated by longing, melancholy and a yearning for the simple, natural life, for a bucolic, pastoral idyll, to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside, a “golden age” when people lived together in harmony with nature, a world on its way of disappearing when he painted his landscapes thanks to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution’.

In terms of landscapes, there are three dominant sources of inspiration for Fantasy authors and GMs – Medieval France, Medieval England, and the forests and mountains of Medieval Germany. Quite often, these form a melange of impressions in which none of the sources are truly represented. Make no mistake, these are quite different in the fine details, but these nuances are often lost to anyone who doesn’t look closely at the historical references.

I looked for a Constable quite deliberately to offer a contrast to all of these sources, but still an image that is not inappropriate to parts of the typical fantasy environment. Farmland and herds of domesticated livestock – cows and sheep and horses – are going to be fairly ubiquitous in fantasy settings, but are often not strongly represented in the images that GMs use for inspiration (though that may be less true of English GMs who have grown up with Constable).

This painting was commissioned by the owner of Wivenhoe Park, Major General Francis Slater-Rebow, who was among the artist’s first patrons. Wivenhoe Park is 200 acres (81 ha) of parkland, purchased by the Rebow family before 1734. The seven-year-old daughter of the Major General is depicted in a donkey cart to the left. The completion of this work earned Constable enough money to marry his long-time love, Mary Bicknell. That adds an extra layer of meaning to it that can be drawn upon for inspiration, making it symbolic of the price that we’re willing to pay for love.
 

Excerpt from The School Of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

The School of Athens is a fresco in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. It depicts a congregation of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists from Ancient Greece.

The list of famous figures (some mythological) who appear in the full fresco include Pythagoras, Socrates, Alexander The Great, Ptolemy, Plato, Aristotle, Apollo, Minerva, Diogenes of Sinope, Raphael, Zoroaster, and Frederico Il Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Note that most of these were not contemporaries!

Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo are also featured, as Plato and Heraclitus (who few will have heard of before), respectively. The cropped version shown focuses on Plato and Aristotle.

Setting aside the combination of brown and blue, often considered a fashion faux pas in modern times, the textual difference between the red cotton robes of the Plato figure (on the left) and the silken folds of blue worn by Aristotle (on the right) immediately caught my attention; this is a level of subtlety and detail that is often overlooked by casual viewing.

Rafael (full name Rafael Sanzio da Urbino) is one of the foremost Italian painters to have ever lived, and is part of the High Renaissance. Although died very young, a mere 37 years of age, he was enormously productive during his lifetime, resulting in his leaving behind a large body of work.

I strongly desired to include an image of either the Roman Empire or the Ancient Greek that preceded it, but the art of both was relatively primitive by modern standards, and not representative of how we envisage those cultures, thanks to movies and TV (unlike their sculptures). But in searching a usable image, I found this cropped excerpt from The School Of Athens,. which neatly ticks the Imperial boxes.
 

Deutsch: Le Chemin creux by Georges Seurat

Seurat is a little more obscure than many of the artists represented so far. He was a French Post-Impressionist who developed the painting techniques known as chormoluminarism (the separation of colors into individual dots or patches that interact optically) and pointilism (using small and distinct dots of color which are applied in patterns to form an image).

I’ve previously talked about Pointilism in two articles:

• Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2, which features it in Twist Eight, and
   
• Writing to the limits of longevity, which uses it in a sidebar about half-way through the article (without ever naming the style).

 
Like newspaper photographs from last century (boy, that makes me feel old), Pointilism relies on a form of optical illusion to create what we perceive to be an image with variable tonal qualities, and I’ve always been fascinated by optical illusions of all kinds..For that matter, inkjet and laser printers work in exactly the same way!

So I knew that I definitely wanted an example of Pointilism within this list, and Seurat was the most famous exponent of that style; but his most famous works – Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte contained subjects that were too linked in time and place to Seurat’s era and to Paris.

Le Chemin creux suffers from neither of these drawbacks. It depicts a downhill track through a field that is surrounded by trees; and there seems to be some sort of building up ahead but that is so vaguely defined that it’s hard to make out; it could be a cottage or a mansion or anything in-between, a barn or a boat-house, a trading post or a timber mill. And there appear to be mountains in the distance (personally, I think it could use a touch more contrast, but that’s a purely personal opinion). This could be just about anywhere in Europe and anytime in the last 800 or more years.
 

American Gothic by Grant DeVolson Wood

Another iconic image. Wood was inspired to paint it by the house in the background, adding figures that he ‘fancied should live in [such a] house’ – a farmer standing beside his daughter (often mistakenly assumed to be his wife). The models for the painting were Wood’s real-life sister and their family dentist.

It has been widely parodied over the years, in everything from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Simpsons and Green Acres, not to mention Mad Magazine, Desperate Housewives, and Sponge bob Squarepants (!), amongst many others. I also seem to remember it showing up in an episode of Scooby-Doo, but could be wrong!

Painted in 1930, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in the same year, now part of the ‘Friends of American Art’ Collection.
 

Boreas by John WIlliam Waterhouse

Waterhouse was an English artist noted for depicting women from both Ancient Greek Mythology and Arthurian Legend in his works. Boreas was the Greek Goddess of the North Wind, and the painting depicts a young girl being buffeted by the wind in a spring landscape.

The painting was somewhat-famously lost for 90 years before being rediscovered and put up for sale in the 1990s, achieving a record price for works by this artist at the time of US$1,294,000.

The style of clothing could be from just about any era, and anywhere in southern or central Europe. The girl could be anyone from a princess to a gypsy.
 

Sci-fi 3D characters by LosBionicos

I very much wanted to include some images of a more directly sci-fi / fantasy orientation, and this – despite the name – could be either. I’m not sure if that’s another character on the nose of the frog, or if the name is a misnomer.

While it’s clearly more photo-realistic, there is nevertheless something about this work that reminds me of Studio Ghibly – maybe it’s the smile, reminiscent of the cat-bus in My Neighbor Tortoro, I’m not sure!

But that smile could easily be seen as a more sinister one, so this character study could offer many possibilities.
 

Fyrtårn for Storebælt by Anton Melbye

The English translation of the title is “Lighthouse at Stora Balt”, and that presents a problem, because this is actually the lighthouse at Eddystone. The artist (full name Daniel Herman Anton Melbye) clearly employed artistic license in more ways than is usual!

He was a Danish artist and photographer who specialized in maritime scenes. I very much wanted a seascape to be one of the images offered in this collection, and the earlier image of the clipper ship did not quite fit the bill. This image of the Lighthouse in pounding surf and inclement weather scratched that itch.

Like most GMs, Anton strove for both realism and drama, enhancing his subjects with dramatic lighting and weather effects, especially of storms. It’s for that reason that this was the work chosen (from several candidates) for inclusion here.
 

hd-wallpaper-4291517 (trees-path-stars-galaxy-starry_sky) by Darkmoon Art

For most of the more modern images that I wanted to include, I turned to my usual clip art provider, Pixabay. This is another image that blurs the lines between fantasy and science-fiction, depicting a stone or wooden park bench in a forest beneath a tunnel through space. Since no-one is visible, it suggests that this is an incoming portal – or a permanent fixture of the location. Where might it lead, and who made it?
 

Richard Westall Landscape Art by David Mark

Okay, so the name is a little confusing – is the artist Richard Westall or David Mark or are they both the same person? If they aren’t, did David Mark have the authority to publicly post Richard Westall’s work, or is this a stolen image? — or it might all be completely innocent, one of the names being a psedonym for the other that is no longer in use, but lingers through past usage.

Who knows?

I have to give all concerned the benefit of the doubt, because I could not go past this dark and dangerous forest with busy little stream emerging from it.

While this could be a sci-fi pic, it has a far stronger fantasy flavor to it.
 

hd-wallpaper-3077928 (fantasy-beautiful-dawn-sunset-sky) by Peter Pyw

Ah, a good old flying city! And a woman in white! Unquestionably fantasy in orientation, but is the focal point the woman, the city, or the relationship between the two?

The city is tethered to the ground using chains. Or are they very distant staircases viewed side-on? And what if the city isn’t flying at all, but an illusion built into the terrain makes it look as though it is, as a defensive disguise? Maybe it’s not a city after all – just the residence of a high-level illusionist and his support staff. So many possibilities, so little time…
 

Warrior-4458063 by Mark Frost, a.k.a. BlackDog1966

A question-begging image. But in place of any lengthy exposition, I thought readers might be better served by a closeup of the right-hand-side. So:

Why is the warrior crying? What has she just had to do, or is she about to have to do that would make her so upset? I sense an epic tale coming on!
 

castle-7003230 by Enqique Meseguer, a.k.a. darksouls1

Is there any more iconic fantasy image than that of a Castle? Disney clearly didn’t think so, that’s why Sleeping Beauty’s castle is the centerpiece of their theme parks! This one is a little unusual, in fantasy terms, in having square towers; although those happened in real history, they are not so common in fantasy art

Square towers are easier to build, but comparatively weak unless an enemy is foolish enough to attack one of the corners, at least compared to round towers, where bricks are arranged in layers of rings; strike the latter, and all he other bricks in the ring try to hold the one struck in place, whereas if you strike the flat surface of the square tower, virtually the whole force goes through the immediate surface.

To compensate for this, square towers can have walls that are up to three times as thick as those of a round tower. But that either severely restricts the space inside the tower, or forces that strength and resilience to be compromised.

The design thus tells you something about the people who designed and built the castle. And that makes them inspiring.
 

Robot Woman 3010309 by 0fjd125gk87.

The penultimate image in this set, this robotic woman is supposedly crying – but I’ve never seen tears travel in discrete droplets like that. One tear, yes – several, no. So perhaps they aren’t tears at all – they could be tattoos, or assembly screws. Not that they are going to be very visible at the scale I am restricted to.

So, let’s confound that restriction and again look at a closeup:

 

The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The Starry Night (often abbreviated to just ‘Starry Night’) was painted in June 1889 by the Dutch painter, Van Gogh, and depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village.

I’ve left this image until last because it’s the one that inspired me to offer up an example of the sort of creativity that this whole collection is in furtherance of.

Specifically,. I was think of this painting and how it uses streaks of color in the same way that pointilism uses dots, and trying to imagine what it would look like if the starts really looked like this image. And then I thought –

What if the streaks were actually Elementals streaking through the sky? What would you call it? Planet of the Elementals has a nice ring to it….
 

So, 21 sources of inspiration, and these (of course) merely scratch the surface. So pick an image that inspires you, and make something of it :)

Don’t forget to drop me a line here in the comments section so that I know to include you in the end-of-month round-up – sometimes backlinks work, sometimes they don’t.

And most importantly of all, have fun!
 

BONUS CONTENT:

My original notes on this topic included a few examples of a slightly different take on the challenge. While not strictly applicable to the blog carnival challenge as described above, I thought they might still be of value to readers, so I’m including them here as an extra bonus.

• eg: Pointilism = hyperspace shock – everything breaks apart into tiny clusters of color, good for general impressions and viewing at a distance, useless at reading things like, oh, instruments and targetting sensors and warning displays…
   
• eg: Cubism = the way everything looks when you force yourself to occupy the “fourth dimension”.
   
• eg: Munch’s The Scream – a woman (or a man?) afflicted with brain-eating worms crosses a bridge, screaming in agony, only to collapse at the feet of the party Cleric – who discovers (to his horror) that these creations of [insert name of favorite evil demon or devil here] cannot be cured with clerical magic, being purely infernal in nature. So begins a quest that the Temples cannot put off any longer, to eradicate the [Demonic/Devilish] curse once and for all…
   
• eg: Sea storm-scene – a sea voyage, complete with pirates, storms, giant calamari, rum, and buried treasure! And, just for fun, let’s make the giant sea-life in question naturally armored…
   
• Bonus points for merging something utterly modern like Warhol’s soup cans with D&D! Maybe a wall display containing hundreds of empty vials arranged in precise lines with exacting spacing, labeled “Healing Potions I Have Known’?

  No? Then let’s see what you can come up with!