I think I wrote in last year's Heroes Con report about working on a Poison Ivy commission for Tim Chandler and how I essentially was redrawing an image I did for an auction years earlier. Then Neil Vokes suggested I draw her popping out of a bloom like a stamen and the piece finally clicked. Timothy just sent me a scan (a mere six months later!), and there it is.
It's all about having a concept, even with a sketch. There's nothing more lame than looking through a collector's sketchbook and seeing an artist who got paid good money having drawn a character just standing there. You can always sneak an idea in there somehow, I like to think. Even if you have to resort to asking Neil Vokes (who's work you should be enjoying if you don't already).

Slowly but surely they all come back to me.