"Don't wait until you know who you are to get started." - Austin Kleon

I've been reading the book Steal Like An Artist - 10 things nobody told you about being creative, written by Austin Kleon, and just finished the second chapter. There are quite a few good things to take away from the reading. Here are some quotes that I really liked "Fake it till you make it" and "Copy your heroes" both of which seem to be really good advice to me. The first one pretty much is telling you to just keep trying, work hard at what you want to do and don't stop until you can do it. The second one kind of helps you with the first. There's a quote that sums it up perfectly "Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself." - Yohji Yamamoto

The book then has another quote ( it's full of them) "Don't steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style." Which is also some really good advice. I think that this quote is trying to say that you can copy someone for practice or to hone your skills, but in the end, you want to research why the person designed that way, what made them tick so-to-speak, and then incorporate that into your designs to make them your own.

I've used the word "copy" many times in this review, but I would also like to introduce the words imitate and emulate. Imitate is basically a fancy word for copying something, which as I've stated previously is a good way to practice your drawing and to hone your skill. To emulate someone, is to work in the same style as that person. You have studied them and their process and are working in a similar manner, but putting your own twist on it. That's what I think most designers are going for. 

In this chapter there is also this pretty cool chart - it is "good theft" vs "bad theft". Under "good" it has honor, study, steal from many, credit, transform and remix. Under "bad" it has degrade, skim, steal from one, plagiarize, imitate, rip off. I'm sure we're all in agreement that we would want to be the "good thief". When reading this, I thought about one of the designers that I wrote about in my blog 2 weeks ago - Alphonse Mucha. I love his work, but can honestly say that I've never tried to create anything in his style. So, I tried a sketch based on his "Precious Stones" series. Now remember, I've never tried drawing in this style and I'm a pretty poor sketcher to begin with, but I'm including a scan of my sketch. Please don't be too tough on me!

Here is a picture of "Precious Stones".
I love the organic flow, the detail, colors, etc., it is praising the feminine form and is full of life.

...and, here's my obscene first attempt at something similar. Please note that I didn't spend much time on this, maybe 5-10 minutes, but, now that I've tried it once, I think I will give it some more attempts. I think that I could pretty easily do the flowers and all "non-human" parts, but will have to really work on my form drawing.

This chapter had quite a few good points to remember when starting out in design and I even used my trusty highlighter on a few sections as a reminder for the future. Just keep doing what you want to do and try hard at it, you'll get there eventually. A quote from Finding Nemo comes to mind "Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming, swimming, swimming", but in this case it would be "copying".