Title Steal Like an Artist
Author Austin Kleon
Kind of Book Creative process
How strongly I recommend it 8/10
My Impressions This is a scrapbook of ideas, quotes, and inspirational nuggets. Kleon has assembled the lessons of many well known artists into 10 lessons for the modern artist. Good coffee table book for inspiration.
Practical Takeaways
Embrace influence. Stop trying to be 100% original
Chew on one thinker, writer, artist, activist, role model you really love. Study everything there is to know about them. Then find three people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them
Hang pictures of your favorite artists/thinkers in your studio as friendly ghosts of inspiration
See yourself as part of a creative lineage with the great men and women who came before you
Be curious about the world in which you live
Step away from the screen to do creative work
Pretend to be making something until you actually make something
Start out by rewriting your hero's catalog
Build the products you want to use
Have a lot of projects going at once so you can bounce between them. When you get sick of one project, move to another, and when you're sick of that one, move back to the project you left
Take time to sit around and do nothing
Put every really nice email in a special folder. When a dark day rolls around and you need a boost open the folder and read through a couple of emails *use it sparingly
Have a hobby. Something that makes you happy (that you don't make money doing)
Find a day job that pays decently, doesn't make you want to vomit, and leaves you with enough energy to make things in your spare time
Take what advice you can use and leave the rest
Big Ideas
When people give you advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.-Andre Gide
If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do-Bill Cunningham
A book is a lens to see the world through