Where on earth do artistic ideas come from? I was seriously making preparations to start a new picture. A preliminary sketch was finished, and I had resurfaced an old canvas, which I had placed on the easel ready for the new job. Everything was ready to go. Then, all of a sudden, I had this feeling that I ought to look over my metaphorical shoulder, because I was actually being followed.
An entirely different project leaped out at me, demanding attention with menaces. Being an artistic coward all I could do was start to look at some completely new reference material entirely unconnected to the first project, and start to make some notes. Before I knew where I was, I had completed four sketches for a group of related images, done some further research, and chosen the support and medium with which I will be working.
How on earth did that happen? How can it be that ideas are so imperative? There is no orderly queue. There was only a poke with metaphorical elbows, and “Just do it!”