Most artists have the instinct to re-create something in their environment, the way something moves, what colors it has ,the way light hits it for instance. All of these begin being broken up into line form and color juxtapositions in the eye of an artist. I think though, that even if we are without the physical tools (paper, canvas, paint- whatever) to render a scene or an object, one is constantly doing so in the artist's mind.
Though occasionally I use other subjects, for the most part it is the human form I love drawing or painting. I like to think about the movement of muscles attached to bones and how it finally affects the way someone poses. I love to paint the way skin looks, affected by the light or by the undertones people naturally have. Skin can be talked about in mediums I use. Oils can give a certain thickness and physicality to skin. I really like using watercolors for my tattoo pieces as you can really talk about the transparency of skin and the way tattoos are also a layer of transparency on skin. That, to me, is what is immediately noticeable in paintings of hundreds of years past, the many layers of coloration used to make skin tones as well as the articulation of muscle.
It is really great to try to attempt convey the emotion a subject might be feeling when I am doing a piece of artwork. Even when people are modeling for me, I like to talk about in my work, the feeling of awareness they have that at that moment, they are exposing themselves to an artist's recreation of themselves.