Three simple rules for unlocking the artist inside you.
You don’t need to go to art school, monetize the art you make, or build an art business to be an artist. You can do none or all of those things if you want to, but you’re already an artist with or without them. Now you just need to get started at waking up to the art you already have flowing as an existing part of you.
As I wrote before, the time is now for us all to become artists. The evidence is growing on the immense importance of art for our well-being across the lifespan, even more so that we are living in uncertain and unprecedented times.
To be an artist does not mean simply being an illustrator or a painter for example, though I happen to be those at this moment. So when I say that we must be artists, I am not referring to an exclusive definition of art as visual in the classic sense. For me, the artistic mediums run the gamut from writing to painting to crafting with more than I could count. Art is a wide-ranging inclusive term here.
The next question may be: how exactly can I start making art?
As a primarily self-taught visual artist who is still expanding her own style after years of independent practice, I have figured out three core tenants of advice that I have for others.
These rules have nothing to do with a business plan, higher degrees you may need, selling your work, or competing with what other artists have done for success. I must admit, I find most advice from “gurus” to be lackluster, more about selling courses or imitating others than allowing yourself to flourish in your own artistic flow.
I don’t want to be a guru, either. I simply want to share this advice and let you do it all on your own, leaving me out of the picture because I also have my own artistic work to do!
Art is a meditation practice for me, simply put, a way of being present for myself in an open way. That is the ultimate goal, the flow of art, to realize that art is zen (to be irreverent just a bit.)
That’s it! The whole shebang.
So, you don’t need to go to art school to make any kind of art, to flow with it. You basically need nothing but you. You are already an artist even before starting.
All you need to be the artist right now is:
- A process to practice
- A place to practice it
- And the ability to play in the flow.
Number One: Pick a process. Get started in the process.
What do I mean by a process? I mean, name a structured way you can make art. For example, if you want to draw portraits, then sit down with a piece of paper and draw a portrait. Name what it is you’d like to practice so you can do it. Do it today, right now, or do it tomorrow, or do it when you have small breaks on your calendar. Do it whenever!
It doesn’t matter what this process looks like. Look at other famous portraits or look at no portraits, but keep making in your process.
Getting started is the hardest part so picking and diving into your process is basically the biggest win you’ll have. If you sit down and draw a portrait of someone but you don’t like it, congratulations you’ve already gotten started! You’ve found your process.
I started my artistic path with pens and notebooks. I would draw on the subway. I would draw into the smallest corners of every office notebook I had, every sheet of paper until I just had to expand it bigger and bigger. But the process of drawing and painting never ended for me.
This is when it’s also good to start learning about the process you picked: the artists in it, the tools you need, and the steps one can take to make the kind of images or products you want artistically.
Immerse yourself in learning the process of painting, drawing, playing music, writing, illustrating, and sculpting (to name a select few) in any way that you can. Go to the library. Buy used books on eBay. Follow other artists. Study it informally or professionally if you have the desire. Make notes on things you notice and like. Walk around a store and just stare at things. Keep a notebook dedicated to the idea of your process, noting what works and what doesn’t. Save things you like and look at them over and over.
This leads me directly into my second rule which is:
Number Two: Pick a place to keep your process and practice going. Never push it away!
Usually, the place starts out as your kitchen table, a nook of your apartment or home, or your work desk.
Let’s say you’ve got a desk in your office for your writing, this is the place you start and keep the process. Keeping it is very important. Even in the hardest of times and in the tiniest of apartments I didn’t want to live in, I had a clear idea of where I could make my art. I knew where it was organized and how to access it. Never let someone else take up the space you need to make art. Claim it and stake it out. If someone wants to diminish it, pay close attention to that.
As you continue at your practice in your newly found place, you want to start looking for a community of sorts. This is the second part of where you practice. As I mentioned in finding your process, you’re going to have to keep learning about it. Sometimes you can combine this all in one. Or you can DIY it. It’s very flexible.
After all. a place to practice means both physical and informally. Where you can find a community of artists is expansive. Here is what has worked for me, though it’s not an exhaustive list by any stretch:
- Social media channels, Youtube, blogs, and Facebook groups that are dedicated to your medium.
- Continuing education programs at colleges and universities
- Adult education and Community Centers.
- Ceramic and Print studios and another co-op style artistic studio
- Open studios in your area
- Mentors and meet up groups
So now as you’re in a process, you’ve also now got a place to do it as well have found others with you. There is just one more rule to which is:
Number Three: Keep the ever-present ability to play.
If you want to get started in making your art, I actually think following your process means that you make two routes to notice and flow within it.
For simplification, and of drawing as an example. I would call this making two images.
The first image is more regimented. That would mean if I’m really interested in drawing food illustrations, I should study, learn how to do them technically, and try to really make that image as best as I can for what I imagine. This reminds me of what Ira Glass said once about the taste gap and how we are always trying to produce the work that meets the taste we have.
But that is not the only image we should make. Your second image is the secret sauce. The second image is basically about unabashed play. In our example of drawing food illustrations, that means I would also be free to draw and make illustrations in any kind of way, without a pinpointed goal, without the rules.
Making two kinds of images/products/ideas/insert your art medium here, one that may fit a style you recognize and one that is playing is about keeping yourself open, like harnessing a floodlight instead of only using a headlight to see what’s around. You have to do them both.
Alan Watts says in Out of Your Mind that if we can find a way to maintain at the same time the specific feeling of being uniquely me and then also know that underneath that feeling that we are also part of “the whole works” of the universe, you can find a different setup of existing in life. What he means is that you can find harmony and joy at just flowing if you can carry on these two things at once.
Why I think we should make sure we keep playing is that we are trained to follow rules, to do things by the book, thus keeping our eyes on narrow paths. We are pros at briefly concentrated pinpointed attention, as Alan Watts says in the lectures, but we also need is to find a way to tap into the broader feeling or flow of existence through our art.
So we should follow a path of making one image in a way that we can structure and learn, but we should never give up the pursuit of play in the other image of our process. We need to be able to use the spotlight, not just the headlights, in our art. And when you start using your spotlight in art, when you know how to play, you can really start to uncover a visual or artistic language, unlike one you expected to find.
Don’t give up the play because you’ve also found a way to replicate or imitate the first image or artistic product in a way that you like. Good artists steal but great artists find their own creative language through play.
In the pursuit of our process, in the ability to connect and stay put, you will find the ability to play. And in the artistic play, you’ll see the you has been there all along, constantly playing.
