Illustrator, children’s book author and toy maker Steve Light described his system in earlier posts (here and here) for making small and portable “inspiration books” to feed his creativity. Here he lets us peek inside a few:

In these books, I just glue in color copies of art that I love – works that show thoughts of other artists, feelings, great design, colors, textures, patterns – whatever helps me think about the project I’m working on.

For me, the process goes like this: At first I have an idea for a project. Then I draw two or three pages and my idea starts to develop. Then I make one of these inspiration books – I like to use the Kolo Vineyard paper albums(because they're small, lightweight and cheap). It takes about a day, because during the process, I’m looking at all kinds of art, choosing what I might like for my project, thinking about the look I want to create...

Making the inspiration book is time well spent, because it fuels my imagination. Once I’ve done this, my project really takes off.

So these inspiration books here… you can see there’s a page for portraits, one for reportage, one for travel, one for location… Seeing how other artists interpreted these things jump-starts my brain.

For example, the portraits are so creative – the way these artists used marks and different shapes. And see the one of the kid sitting on a bed in a room with red walls? That’s Ezra Jack Keats’ art, and that’s all about great design, shapes, patterns, simplicity.

It’s liberating to see the work of other artists, because it reminds you that you don’t have to stay locked into one way of drawing. You don’t try to copy their work; instead you just allow yourself to be inspired by it.

To have so many great examples of art in front of me is so uplifting – Keats, Paul Klee, Picasso, Disney, Saul Steinberg… It makes me feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.

This and other Kolo album projects can be seen at Ugo's Flickr page.