How do I come up with original ideas/paintings?

That’s easy, real life. You've gotta get out of your studio and study real life. Also, study art fundamentals, so you can analyze and reconstruct your art from that. It makes you see what’s interesting about "boring ordinary life." Don’t just seek beauty, but focus on what’s interesting, dynamic, out of the ordinary, different. If everything fails, travel, go see places.

Give it time though. Changing from a copying artist to an original artist takes time, failed attempts and picking yourself up after art blocks. The originality stems not from unique subject matter or ideas, but from your unique perspective as a human being, and it takes time to find that perspective, more time to express it into art.

It may take a lifetime to fully develop it, but the process of originality is interesting and bears fruit through intermediate art, that somewhat expresses your direction and is different and interesting enough to show to the world, even if it doesn’t fully satisfy your artist needs.

This is the plight of the original artist, never fully satisfied, always wanting more, better, greater. The copying artist can never go beyond the art they copy, until they do by studying the same sources the original artist did, and more.

/r/ArtistLounge Thread