Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing gets made from nothing. Every artist you admire built on the people who came before them — Picasso and Dalí were arguably the greatest thieves in history, and the Beatles started life as a cover band. Creativity isn’t about conjuring originality out of thin air; it’s about recombination. So the practical advice is almost embarrassingly direct: pick the people whose work moves you, copy them closely, and pay attention to the exact places where your copy fails. That gap — the part of them you can’t reproduce — is where your own voice lives.

Austin Kleon on SummaryShelf

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative