By Jim Pence

Are you always looking for new and fresh subjects for your paintings or drawings? Then you might need to consider developing a “morgue file”.

No, I don’t mean a room where dead bodies are kept.

“Morgue file” is a term that goes back to the days before digital storage, when newspapers and publishers would keep files of old articles, magazines, photos, etc., for reference purposes. Eventually, artists adopted the term to refer to a collection of reference photos and drawings.

Developing a good morgue file is a great way to have a ready source of ideas for pictures when you need to prime your creative pump.

There are a lot of ways to develop your own morgue file, but here are five easy suggestions to get you started:

Stock Photo Websites – The digital age has made it easy to find and collect reference photos. Stock photo websites are a great place to look for pictures. A Google search on “stock photos” will bring up a host of different sites, including a free site named: Morguefile.com. These sites are searchable, so if you’re interested in doing a seascape, just type that in and you’ll find more photos than you’ll know what to do with. (Because searching for images online can be risky, always make sure that safe search is turned on when you or your children visit these sites, and never let your children search them unsupervised.)

Travel Web Sites – If you want to do drawings or paintings of exotic location, but can’t afford the travel expenses, do a Google search on the location and you will bring up a host of travel sites. Most of those sites will have pictures that you can use.

Use Your Phone – Nowadays, most people have cell phones and most cell phones have cameras. Whenever you’re out and about, don’t forget to use your cell phone’s camera to take pictures of anything interesting that you think you might like to paint later.

Other People’s Vacation Photos – Don’t be afraid to ask your friends and relatives to share their vacation photos with you. If you see something you’d like, ask them for permission to add it to your “morgue file”.

Old Magazines, Greeting Cards, Church Bulletins – And don’t forget print media. Old magazines, greeting cards, church bulletins, etc., are great sources for reference photos. You’ll want to set up a filing system so that you can easily retrieve them, or you might want to scan them and save them digitally.

With all of the above photos (except the ones you take yourself), remember that they are copyrighted material (yes, even your friends’ vacation photos could technically be considered copyrighted). So, don’t copy them exactly unless you have permission. Remember these are reference photos. You’ll want to take elements from them and use those elements to create something new and fresh.

On Thursday’s blog, I’ll show you how to do that. Until then, keep drawing—and have fun!