Art & Creativity
It’s impossible to imitate another artist’s point of view. We can only swim in the same waters. So feel free to copy the works that inspire you on the road to finding your own voice. It’s a time-tested tradition.
Rick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The thing you are deeply yearning to create is told to you in all the subtle ways other people's artwork slightly misses the mark
Miles Johnstonx.com"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. The same is true of any endeavor: if the solution you seek doesn't exist, create it."
3-2-1: Four questions for life, how to learn like a child, and seeing things in a generous way
“The more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” —Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
it is useful to remember that art and literature—and especially good art and good literature—have more or less always been of marginal interest to the general population.
Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop
It’s easier to recognize beauty than it is to create it. You’re good enough to know that what you’re doing isn’t good, but not good enough to produce something great. When you find yourself in this frustrating limbo, the challenge is to never forget what got you there in the first place. Remember that thing that got you into the game.
Your love.... See more
Your love.... See more
James Clear • Ira Glass and What Every Successful Person Knows, but Never Says
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with... See more
Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential, durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it’s visible? That is a real question. One of my
... See moreUrsula K. Le Guin • Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin
I know a painting coach who tells her students to listen for resistance in the copying process. “Do you hear that?” she asks. “It’s the echo of your unique style.” Those moments highlight the second benefit of copying: it reveals your voice.
Ironically, the more we imitate others, the more we discover how we’re different.