Austin Kleon

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  2. Wow, what an inspiring read. Thank you. Although I’ve never considered myself an artist, in the last two years I’ve realized how much creativity has always been a part of me. I loved this article. It reminds me that I am an artist after all…always learning and always “stealing”. Loved this!!!!!

  3. Well said! Reassuring and inspiring.
    Point #2 in particular I like, because I don’t think I will ever know who I am or who I am is my art. I make art because I’m compelled to not just because its appreciated.

  6. Here’s a list courtesy of the surrealist, HR Giger. http://www.hrgiger.com

    Dear Aspiring Artist,

    Here is my advice. Think of it as a five-year plan:

    Take whatever courses you find the most interesting.

    Study closely the work of the Old Masters.

    Stop making art that originates only from your own imagination.

    Stay with one technique until you perfect it.

    On any given day, always be in the middle of reading a book. When you finish one, start the next. Fiction, nonfiction, biographies, autobiographies, history, science, psychology, or how to build a kite. Anything but go easy on the comic books.

    Buy and read the first 6 pages of newspaper every day and also the editorial commentaries. Skip the entertainment section. Su Doku is fine. Do the crossword puzzle.

    Fill up a sketchbook every month with pen or pencil drawings of the world around you, not from your imagination.

    Buy a book on figure drawing. It’s the only art book you will ever need.

    Until you can draw an accurate portrait of someone, you don’t know how to draw.

    Stay away from the airbrush. You’ll never master it, hardly anyone ever has.

    Visit every museum in your city. Often, until you have seen everything in it. Every kind of museum. Not only the art museums but, of course, those as well.

    Forget about contemporary art by living artists, at least for the next few years.

    Stay away from most art galleries. Go to art auctions. That’s where the real action is.

    Learn to play chess.

    Take a business course.

    Talk to you mother or father at least once a week.

    Stop going to the movies until you have rented and seen every film on this list. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html

    Do not watch television unless it’s the news or documentaries.

    Do not use an Ipod.

    No video games, either.

    Learn a foreign language.

    Learn to cook.

    Spend 8 hours in a hospital emergency room.

    Save up money so you can travel to a foreign country within the next five years.

    Do not litter.

    Avoid politically correct people.

    Vote in every election or never dare to utter a political opinion. You are not entitled to one.

    Buy a digital camera and take photos every day.
    If you see nothing interesting to photograph, you will never be a good artist. Keep only one photo of every ten you take. Delete the rest. It will force you to learn how to edit the garbage from your life, to make choices, to recognize what has real value and what is superficial.

    Visit an old age home.

    Listen to classical music and jazz. If you are unable to appreciate it at least as much as contemporary music, you lack the sensitivity to develop into an artist of any real depth.

    Go to the ballet. Classical or Modern, it doesn’t matter. It will teach you to appreciate physical grace and the relationship between sound and movement.

    Wake up every morning no later than 8 AM, regardless of what time you went to sleep.

    Learn to play a musical instrument.

    Learn to swim.

    Keep your word.

    Never explain your art. People who ask you to do so are idiots.

    Never explain yourself. Better yet, never do anything that will, later, require you to explain yourself or to say you’re sorry.

    Always use spell check.

    Stop aspiring and start doing.

    This will keep you very busy but it can’t be helped.
    In my opinion, this is how you might, possibly, have a shot at becoming a good artist!

  8. Hey Austin
    A friend sent this through to me: wow -love what you have said here. Hope you don’t mind, but I have just used Lesson 10 for part of my Complexity Theory assignment for the BPhil Honours course I am doing, (you were credited of course). Thanks for sharing. It makes an essentially non-artist person like me really want to try. Cheers Andrea

  10. A true artist wouldn’t claim he’s an artist. Creativity is great, but art comes from something much deeper and more fundamental, something that is inherently there or not, technique is what allows it to be realized.

  12. I kind of, truly love this. And when something reaffirms my crazy life choices and re-inspires me to be an “artist”, which is really just another word for human being, it makes me feel soooo good.

  14. So grateful for this post! So true and so very inspiring. Glad to connect with you and hope to continue to follow your work. Follow me @pujamohindra. Looking forward to checking out your book!

  16. amazing -enlightening how the author put’s it all in perspective. Simple, yet so complex. Genetics and environment play such important roles in who we are. He’s so right – there aren’t really any ‘new’ ideas, only revised old ones. -It’s the true artist who can play with an old idea and make it brand new again. Truly inspiring !

  18. You really should turn this into a book. If you’ve never heard of ‘How to Be Happy Dammit’ or ‘Enough Dammit’ by Karen Salmansohn, buy it, steal from it and turn this post into a book! I would buy it.

  19. Wow… this… this made me quite depressed. The idea that nothing is original? All that really means is that there is nothing worth creating. Thanks for that.

  20. Dude you said out loud what i was pondering and searching in my head for so long. I am now printing out your article and hanging it on my home office wall…
    AMAZING WORK ….
    Your really are one of my role models NOW….

    Yours Paul Vosniadis (Graphic web designer from Athens / Greece)

  21. GREAT! This is really about all I ever learned about creativity. I studied and taught the INTENSIVE JOURNAL PROCESS for New York Based DIALOGUE HOUSE founded by Doctor Ira Progoff, and he was saying basically this to us.

    I particularly love the way you set out this series of points. I followed your logic, and I’m fired up.

    Ambiguity is a friend of mine, and your familiarity with it helped me accept that I am working in a cloud a lot of the time.

    I keep writing the book I OUGHT to write and in my journals are the books I want to write. I think you just washed away all my ennui about my writiing.

    Onward! Upwards! Downwards! Sideways! This is great!

    I THANK YOU FROM THE CHECKMARK IN MY HEART FOR THIS HOUR USED WISELY TODAY.

  22. Thank you so much for the reinforcement of all those things we’re supposed to know about art. I appreciate this SO MUCH. It’s exactly what I needed to read today.

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  4. […] become accustomed to.  We can learn things that way, from game design to personal preference.  And as this interesting article notes, great artists draw from a wide variety of sources.  I think this is true for music, games and pretty much any other artistic endeavor, whether as an […]

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