Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon – A modern take on creativity that all creative work is a remix of existing ideas. This idea is empowering for creatives of all kinds:artists, writers, musicians and anyone hoping to cultivate more creativity in their life. Kleon seeks to challenge readers – people who want to create art, share their ideas or build something new – and encourages them instead to relish it; yes steal from others, be influenced by the best minds in history but only so that they can influence you.
Today I going to discuss an amazing book, Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like an Artist.” In this book, the writer talks about how creative individuals acquire knowledge from their surroundings and create unique things using this knowledge.
Contents of Steal like and artist book
- Introduction: “You Don’t Need to Be a Genius”
- Step 1: Steal Like an Artist
- Step 2: Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started
- Step 3: Write the Book You Want to Read
- Step 4: Use Your Hands
- Step 5: Side Projects and Hobbies Are Important
- Step 6: The Secret: Do Good Work and Share It with People
- Step 7: Geography Is No Longer Our Master
- Step 8: Be Nice (The World Is a Small Town)
- Step 9: Be Boring (It’s the Only Way to Get Work Done)
- Step 10: Creativity Is Subtraction
Who is the book for?
When people want to advise someone, they often speak from their past experiences. This book, too, shares personal experiences from the past. If you aspire to bring creativity into every aspect of your life or want a new perspective on inspiration, then this book and the ideas it presents are for you. In this book, Austin Kleon encourages readers to draw inspiration from their surroundings and to accept that nothing is entirely original in its true sense.
Where do smart people find their creative ideas?
If you inquire from intelligent or creative individuals around you, you’ll find that their creative ideas aren’t entirely original. Most of them will either ignore you or try to skip your questions. And if someone wishes to give you an honest answer, they should tell you they have stolen it. According to Austin Kleon, in this world where people are creating so many unique ideas, there is nothing entirely original or fundamental.
Every single artist is influenced by those who came before them. And true creativity comes from the ability to mix these influences into something new. In other words, everything creative individuals do is essentially stolen from someone else.
For example, if you want to learn guitar or any kind of musical instrument or write a book, you have to follow the way previous people have written the notes of a book, the way a guitar rhythm, chords, or tunes have been written. The same is true in every field of our life. We collect ideas from each other. When we copy from just one person and create something as our own, we call it stealing. And when we copy from others and create something as our own, we call it “creativity”. There is no such thing as “UNIQUE” in the world but one can create a version of oneself by taking information from many.
Example of various Art’s school techniques:
A trick is taught in different arts schools. They are asked to draw two parallel lines on a piece of paper. After that, they ask, how many lines are there? 1+1=3. If you say 1+1=2, then your answer will be wrong. If you notice, there is another line between the two parallel lines. Genetics would be a good example of it. Let’s say your father and mother, they both have a certain trait. By combining the characteristics of both of them, a new characteristic is created inside you that is better than them. As families have lineages. In the same way, ideas also have lineages. A new idea is created when an idea is influenced by another idea. But, people can never copy each other exactly. While copying, an idea of something new and creative is created.
In my opinion, the way you may use to gather your ideas is to choose your favorite individuals and research everything about him and his idol.
“The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively.” The artist collects what he loves that he can relate to himself. You will become what surrounds yourself with. Because our nature is shaped by what we love. This way, I tell you to choose a man of your choice no matter who he is. Next, do research or study about that person. And when you’re done researching or studying about your idol, study about the three persons your idol liked. By collecting ideas in this way, you can create an idea tree of your own. After that, you can slowly expand the branches of your idea tree. Your job is to collect good ideas. And being influenced by it to do better. Gather ideas from something that resonates with your aspirations or speaks to your soul. If you work in this way, you will be able to do a lot of good things. And your work will also be considered authentic.
My personal Experience with this book:
I enjoyed reading the book. It means reading for pleasure. Here are some pictures. These are very interesting. Here are pictures from the author’s own diary. Especially the words here are very beautiful. If you have a habit of sitting down and reading with a pen/pencil, you might end up smearing the entire book. I like the words very much. The number of pages in the book is very few. You can read it in 1 hour if you want.
10 motivational quotes of this book what i like most
- ”You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.
- The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that i can steal from.
- Travel makes the world’s perspective new and when it is all of a sudden fresh out of the box to our brains, they work harder.
- How amazing is this quote “Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play music if u wanna listen it after than write books that demand from people and build houses feel like living into”
- – Someone who clearly has too much time on their hands.
- “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.”
- “The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively.”
- “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”
- “Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”
- “Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.”