>>96369328
>>Do you refer to "generic" materials like pic related, trope lists, etc, to derive inspiration, either by borrowing or intentionally eschewing them?
No. Looking at trope lists creates an artificial kind of feeling I think. I freely use a lot of tropes or borrowed ideas or designs but that all comes from the soup of my brain that's absorbed all kinds of media.
If I feel like I'm in a slump I'll read or watch all varieties of things including nature biographies on odd things, deep dives into religion, military history, or paranormal things. A lot of it doesn't directly get used but gets me in the right headspace.

>>7675075
My purely abstract stuff is mostly acrylic. Sometimes a little mixed media like the two black bars on the above are black thin wrapping paper strips glued onto the page (did that during a workshop encouraging mixed media).
I don't know if I really like full on painting or not but I think it helps feed into my pen and pencil drawing somehow