Austin Kleon

You are here: Blog / Notes on writing and drawing / Steal Like An Artist

Comments

  6. Hi Austin,

    Awesome post.. thank you…. I could so well connect to your post for I know you’ve penned them all, from the annals of your experience(s).

    Thank you. Really …. really encouraging & enlightening!!!

  7. I follow the recommendations of longreads.com, which is why I read this. I love the title. So I came to your blog and started reading: it bored me. But I went back to longreads and it was still on top so I tried again and it bored me again but I still loved the title.

    This time, I read it all the way through. If this is what passes for good (great?) writing today, this proves to me that the internet is not just changing reading habits but changing how people think. If this passes for good thinking and good writing, then thinking and writing are deteriorating.

    This is mildly interesting but it also reads like a project a smart and always-male high school sophomore with more confidence in himself than is warranted would submit and his teachers would fawn over it cause part of their job is to encourage sophomoric aspiration.

    If this is art, art now sucks. If this is good, good is now bad.

  8. Thank you! We may have taken different paths to get there, but I have definitely arrived at the same conclusions. I’m particularly fond of the idea that Art isn’t Magic. That’s the attitude I’ve taken in both my music and art careers — I’m firmly of the opinion that there is enough work and success to go around, and being upfront and honest about the “how” of what you do only helps you in the long run. People remember that kind of mentorship and generosity. Beyond that, creating a dialogue about what it really takes to be a successful, working artist helps us all reach that goal even faster.

  10. My day job is being an artist, what if you told a brain surgeon to get a day job, and just work on his brain surgery on the side. This blog trivializes the importance of a full time commitment to your art.

  15. The most absurd advice or satire or conspiratorial evilness for American Society. This is intolerable for real creators. Only robots or conventional machines are incapable of using their brains. Inventions and progress and evolution would not be possible without own thinking.

  19. Best piece on creative mind and action taking besides Gordon McKenzie’s “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”.

    There are many artists around us, probably most anything we can’t explain with straight forward explanations, figures or words. Artists are designers of the world around them with what they feel inside, coming from a accumulation of personal knowledge and experience over the years.

    Big Thanks to Ian Whalen of http://facebook.com/Semperoper.Ballett who made me aware of it, http://twitter.com/Ianwhalen1387/status/57005297838993408

    Cheers, Ralf

  23. I agree with everything except the “be boring” part. You need to live every possible experience at your grasp.

  26. I can’t believe that stumbleupon brought me here. I was unable to stop reading. I’m glad. I quoted you several times on Facebook while reading this. Took notes and feel I can steal from you some ideas. You have (like Bob Ross and Martha Stewart) given your secrets away and in what way. Inspiring to say the list. I find myself doing many side projects at the same time. While creating a new language for my Languages in SciFi class I have ended up with a while story. But that’s not the point. You have opened my mind, and I feel challenged by you, so I will take this challenge and push forward.

  27. Thank you so much for this article, it was truly a gift, a pleasure, and a privilege to read in-between my studies.

    Some of these points have been made in my art classes before but I think reading them and seeing them right in my face gets the point across more effectively, at least for me.
    I thank you again for taking the time to make this. It’s truly been inspiring and I’m going to carry these points with me wherever I go and as I advance in my art career.

Trackbacks

  18. […] Austin Kleon: “How to Steal Like an Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)” I usually hate advice posts, but this one is gold. For example: There was a video going around the internet last year of Rainn Wilson, the guy who plays Dwight on The Office. He was talking about creative block, and he said this thing that drove me nuts, because I feel like it’s a license for so many people to put off making things: “If you don’t know who you are or what you’re about or what you believe in it’s really pretty impossible to be creative.” […]

Recent posts

Follow me elsewhere

This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.