Inspiration?
polycounter lvl 8
I love stuff like this. Really opens your eyes.
http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/
http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/
Replies
"10. Creativity is subtraction.
It’s often what an artist chooses to leave out that makes the art interesting. What isn’t shown vs. what is.
In this age of information overload and abundance, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s important to them.
Devoting yourself to something means shutting out other things.
What makes you interesting isn’t just what you’ve experienced, but also what you haven’t experienced.
The same is true when you make art: you must embrace your limitations and keep moving.
Creativity isn’t just the things we chose to put in, it’s also the things we chose to leave out. Or black out.
And that’s all I think I have.
Thanks, y’all.
"
alot of the stuff resonated with my teacher Marshal Vandruff's ideas about making it in the art world.
9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.
As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
I’m a boring guy with a 9-5 job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog.
That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.
The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
this put me at ease about how boring my life is, and yet how mutch more satisfied i feel everytime I work.
That's a good person with interest in others.
And the big question, who's this guy? is he a best seller or what? a "blogger"?, someone important? do i miss something? and what's up with his self confidence to write/put those big words?. In my country he would be a "Don Nadie" or "Mr Nobody".
Reading all that, I just only see a freak, a geek guy without imagination and too much ego (aspiring to artist?), without creativity, a person lacking of too many things and saying stupid statements like "steal as an artist" and "nothing is original" (yep, your existence is not original, plenty of humans with eyes and ears). With that bullshit he only can please the people without talent, offending the true artists with those poor statements. Yeah, this is the internet, a place where the small people get bigger than big people.
But i must recognize he has a great ability to write what others may want to read with pretty but empty words. He would be a better politician than a writer, because there's too much successful demagogy in his "article".
Things aside: "did you ever dream? did you ever daydream? did you ever see with your mind's eye? if not, you lack imagination and power to create"
Want to get the divine touch?, stay healthy, work all the days to get better in your craft, and have a fresh mind sleeping your hours, and express your interior world, all your emotions with your craft. But for god's sake, don't trust all from people like this, and innovate, use your fucking brain, transform the reality, don't steal, don't plagiate, be original. There will always be people like this one, defeated people, saying stupid things like "nothing is original", when the word "original" was created for a very very special reason.
Sad people gonna be SAD.
But I guess that since the guy is a writer, then it was productive indeed hehe.
What's with the hate, dude? Let others do what they want. I think saying it makes you sick, is a little extreme, no?
He does however tell about how you should "reveal your secrets" as he calls it and that's probably what he's done with this page.
Edit: And yeah, I agree with Prophecies.
I'm fed up of people with such poor statements, that's all.
I hate when someone spread the word like the universal truth, and more when almost all what he said is total bullshit. It can't be helped, sometimes i get angry like all of us.
Its one of my theories that when people give you advice, theyre really just talking to themselves in the past. This list is me talking to a previous version of myself.
Your mileage may vary."
He makes it pretty clear who his target audience is :P Anyone else but his past self is allowed to take it with a grain of salt.
I thought this blog was rather interesting overall. There were a few points I don't agree with (for years and years I've been told how amazing and useful it is to keep a journal, and I still have yet to ever take a fancy to that idea), but also a lot of interesting ones.
I actually thought the video he referred to with Rainn Wilson was much less inspiring. I agreed with almost none of the points in that video (not that I don't think he's hilarious on the Office, mind). The author didn't sound like he cared too much for this video either.
Anyway, thanks for posting! I always find it interesting to hear the advice from other artists on creativity, whether I agree or not. But isn't that one of the points that he makes? Choose what to steal.
Nothing is original anymore, he is 100% correct. New concepts are only created because they are a mix of old concepts. Something that you think is original is just a mash-up of everything you have experienced throughout your life, just re-interpreted in a different perspective.
As we learn more things and experience new things as well, what we create changes with that.
It seems like he is a little bit more in touch with his craft than you are, to be perfectly honest.
Does combining old concepts into something new not make it original though?
Also, a point I'd like to make. To say 100% that nothing is original anymore you'd have to know everything that exists in the universe. Otherwise how can you know that there's nothing out there that's new. Think about it.
Also it'd be nice if you could avoid personal attacks from now on. Blazier is just trying to discuss the topic.
I didn't attack him in anyway, don't understand what you mean...
I was just trying to discuss the topic too, discussion is about speaking from your own perspective on something.
Originality can come from new things created from a mash-up of old things I suppose, was probably taking the article too literally and here is my re-interpretation of it.
The article isn't really speaking incredibly literally when it says to steal work and what not, it means take inspiration from all sources and don't limit your viewpoint based on your personal preferences.
yeah what Mezz says
I found myself agreeing with a lot of the points, almost like it's a list of things I already knew, but a reminder is always nice.
"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton
"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." Pablo Picasso
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." T.S. Eliot