Developing an idea

I'm often asked the question, "where do you get your ideas?", so I thought I might give a stab at explaining that a little bit. Many times an idea for an illustration will come directly from a figure drawing. I'll sketch until something inspires me, or I see a foot or leg positioned in an intriguing way, or the tilt of a head "says" something to me. I don't always know what direction I'm headed when I start, but something usually clicks and I end up following my muse. I also find it useful to do thumbnail sketches. I keep pads of post-it notes hanging around the house. I find these useful for thumbnails in that they are about the right size and proportion.I'll post the figure drawing here that is slowly developing into an idea in my head. I know she is going to be standing in water (probably a swamp). This was directly related to the initial drawing and her pose (worm's eye view looking up at her). I'm starting to think that she will be threatened by some type of monster, but I'm not sure how he will look yet. I've come to the conclusion that her pose will probably change now because she doesn't look startled enough, and I also think that I want her to be holding a net full of tiny versions of the larger animal. This will create a nice connection between what she's hunting for and Papa Monster, and give him a reason for being pissed off, and her a weird issue about eating baby swamp monsters. In the page of thumbnails posted here, I'm just trying to get the beginning compositional elements arranged within the picture plane. I'll work out the details later, but I'm always trying to think ahead as to where the drawing might be headed.