STEAL ART


Austin Kleon (2012). Steal Like an Artist: 

                                   10 Things Nobody Told You 

                                   About Being Creative.


Kleon has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies and describes himself as a "writer who draws." This is the first of 3 books that he has written to date (2024) related to art, drawing, and creative work.

While Kleon has 10 main points in the book (see image below), these are my takeaways:

1.to steal ideas, quotes, formats, systems, images...for the purpose of inspiration is to "steal like an artist"

2.get behind what you see/hear, find out the history behind ideas, people, their influences 

3.write the book that you want to read that isn't out there...you'll be working for yourself, and it's bound to help others that share your love of the topic, OR take one of your favorite books and improve on it, write a sequel...

4.have two workstations--one digital with a computer, mouse, external hard drive...and one analog with a notebook, plain paper, pencil and crank sharpener, ruler...at the analog desk create, at the digital desk publish.

5.DO GOOD WORK AND SHARE (in person, blog, tweet, email, discord, podcast...) BITS OF IT WITH OTHERS AS YOU MAKE IT...open up your process, invite others in, and share only what you feel comfortable sharing (just cuz you made it doesn't mean you *have to* share it).

6.log your work, give yourself credit, see the progress and feel the growth

7.at the end of each day, ask, "what's the best thing that happened today," write it down (variation on practice of gratitude which has all kinds of benefits for well being according to Emmon's psychological research).

note: impressed by the quotes and primitive illustrations throughout the book...so many books have ZERO drawings--i need to include this in my future books.


For application, test out numbers 2, 3 (just start with one page or if you are ambitious a chapter, or use Chat GPT or other AI for outlining book ideas on a given topic), 4, 5 (the most important), 6, and 7--take your pick, but pick, and DO IT NOW.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more