One of the most daunting aspects of pursing a creative or artistic career for many aspiring artists is not knowing how to learn the craft. So, we asked some very talented artists and creatives to talk to us about how they learned their crafts and we hope their stories will help you in your journey.

Kion Williams

I first learned how produce by djing, I would DJ party’s for friends and family, but when I was djing I realized that I was mixing different songs together with different instrumentals and drum patterns. After a while I got Ableton to produce and from there I self taught myself with tons of YouTube video and by being blessed to sit in and watch some of my all time favorite producers. Read more>>

Janine Etherington

I’ve been a painter for over 40 years. A couple years ago, I got some difficult news that pretty much knocked me off my feet. I remember pushing myself to go to the studio during this time, even though I’d lost my equilibrium, and I really didn’t have it in me to generate a painting. So I picked up the small 3″ x 3″ x 2″ canvases that I had floating around my studio and decided to simply cover them each with a single color, icing them like cake with a thick coat of paint. Read more>>

Ken Hill

The most important lesson I can share with learning a new craft is to stop everything and ask yourself “How do I best learn a skill, knowledge or habit that I can actually apply?” How do you best retain knowledge? Do you need to write it down? Do you recite it in your head? Do you have to take baby steps? Do you need to take bold, daring jumps into chaos? Do you need a fully written plan? Read more>>

Nic Bongers

Everyone in my group grew up being huge KISS fans. It’s a step further to actually make a tribute band. Since you have years of knowledge, you try and seal up every detail at as high of a level as possible. KISS fans can tell when they see you what looks “close” and what doesn’t. It’s part of their experience to judge and discriminate. Read more>>

Kevin Loiselle

I learned more about filming and editing on my own than I did from school. Even during my college film courses, I learned more outside of the class/lecture time than in them. The film program and courses were excellent at two things: connecting me with other students interested in film, and teaching me the principles of storytelling. Read more>>

Erika Lane Enggren

I have a couple of different crafts that I’ve learned over the years in the artistic field. I would consider my main two passions to be acting and poetry/writing. My mother is an actress and casting director and she used to bring me with her to her auditions when I was 2 and 3 years old. I ended up booking three national commercials because of it. Read more>>

Phil Crosby jr

It has taken me many years to acquire my skill set. I wasn’t a great student. From childhood i learned to teach myself much better than i learned to receive instruction. I think all that started due to the overcrowding of the Los Angeles public school system of the 1980’s. I was shy and it was easy to blend into the background and I was gifted with enough natural intelligence and an enjoyment of reading that i could pass classes without fully applying myself and the teachers, much like they do now, were willing to let me fall through the cracks and avoid hands on direction toward the higher learning i oft times now wish i had got. Read more>>

Teresa Hammer

I am self taught. Once I had kids, I really fell in love with taking photographs of them. I joined groups with mentors and opened myself up for critique from my peers to learn how to be better. I had the goal of learning something new each time I would use my camera. Once I mastered what I was learning, I would choose the next thing to learn. Read more>>

Jillian Stormer

I have been creating epoxy tumblers since 2020. Learning this craft has taken alot of time, trial, and error. I taught myself from youtube tutorials and experimenting with different techniques. Although, four years later and I still mess up at times. I enjoy the challenges of working with epoxy. Read more>>

Kendria Thompson

I started my journey into metalsmithing in 2015 after designing costume jewelry for 5 years. I honed my skills in metalsmithing through a combination of trial and error, online resources such as YouTube, metalsmithing books, and the generosity of experienced makers who were willing to share their knowledge. Read more>>

Tavion Marquez

Growing up, my uncle Nick had a turntable setup at my late grandmother’s house. I remember him grabbing a speaker from the living room stereo, bringing it back to the room & rocking out. I must have been around 5 years old when he let me scratch a record for the first time. From then on, I knew being a DJ is what I wanted to do. Read more>>

Senghor Reid

I had great teachers and I tried to absorb everything they taught me throughout my time as a student in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. One thing I could have done differently is to have served as an assistant to a professional artist after undergraduate study. I feel like I would have been more challenged as a young artist, especially when it came to my subject matter. Read more>>

Keana Almonte

When it came to learning my craft, I would put myself in rooms with successful people in my industry to gain wisdom, criticism, and most importantly, the criteria. From there, I started organizing events to gain my portfolio, and build my network and community. Read more>>

Darien Davis

I learned how to create music from a very young age. I started by taking piano lessons and my brothers and I all learned how to play an instrument. We also all loved to sing. I found myself listening and learning from my favorite artists. Learning their songs, then I started writing my own songs. Read more>>

Parker Bridges

Books! Loads and loads of books from lighting techniques to painting. The drama you can get just from shifting certain aspects of a scene has always heavily interested me. If I had to do it again I would spend much more time going straight to the most advanced voice in my field to learn from their techniques. Putting what you’ve learned into practice as quickly as possible has always been the fastest way for me to accelerate my growth. Read more>>

Helen RY Sun & Laura Malatos

LAURA: I’ve always been really into the arts, so growing up I did a lot of community theater, took writing classes, and went to filmmaking camps. Even though I didn’t know the craft of screenwriting at the time, that early foundation really helped build a love of story and taught me so much about exercising your imagination. I also had some really amazing mentors who were so dedicated to their craft and to teaching and gave me the confidence to pursue film professionally. Read more>>

Jazmyn Ervins

How did you learn to do what you do? I went to school for fashion and learned a lot of design and construction skills. Before College, I was always drawing in my sketchbook and sewing occasionally; I had the passion and motivation to want to learn more and perfect my art. Read more>>

Sonez

To be honest, sometimes I have no idea how I learned to do that I do! I never got formally trained in making music, though I grew up taking lessons and courses here and there. I used to feel regretful that I never got the chance to really go deep with my music education, but in hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing because I see now how everything actually worked out in my favor. Read more>>

Johnny Xodus

My name is Darien Williams (Johnny Xodus), and I have been producing for 12 years. I started using Canva about 2 years ago and I have been using Canva Pro for about a year. Canva Pro helps me when creating album covers, loopkit covers, and artists template pictures for my website. I have been working to become full time with my craft for a while now. I currently work as a high school teacher during the day and as things change with technology and social media, I am always looking to improve my craft. Read more>>

Freaking Ding Bat

I started out not knowing how to draw at all. It was only after going through the 2008 market crash and constantly working for companies that closed down that I realized I needed to something that benefited me. I need to develop skills that no one could take away from me and that I could use to make my own money. So every night I set aside an hour to draw. I bought a giant roll of white paper, markers and pencils and I would draw. Read more>>

Lorena Pulido

As an actress, my journey into this profession involved a combination of formal education, practical experience, and continuous self-improvement. I started by taking acting classes when I was in high school, I was in theater all four years. Once I graduated, after a failed attempt at pursuing a different college degree, I transferred to Columbia College Chicago for Acting. Read more>>

Ben Zask

Through observation and experience I learned my craft. I enjoy seeing great assemblage work in galleries and museums, but I also observe how the pieces of the work are held together. Screws, nails, wire, thread, dowels, glue… sometimes hidden, sometimes being part of the piece. Observation of other’s work has helped me learn the craft. Read more>>

Steve Vito

Before music production, I had been in and out of rock bands for years as a singer / songwriter / guitarist and when the last one broke up, I was at a crossroads and decided I was going to write songs anyway, so why not try to do something with those songs. Read more>>

John Tripp

I’m the biggest proponent of hands on learning. I think OVER researching can be the enemy of progress. You definitely need to initially educate yourself on what you need to get started, but you shouldn’t try to understand EVERYTHING before you begin. I find that it’s easy to overwhelm yourself into not even beginning. For me, I just googled “good video cameras”, watched a couple YouTube videos about the cameras, and then bought the camera. Read more>>

Giorgia Migliarini

Curiosity is my best precious teacher. I could lean on to every time I feel stuck or even hopeless. I’m a self-learner so basically, what I did and constantly keep doing, is to explore the technique step by step, from easy to complex, by using all the resources I could reach. I’m a teacher too, so I really know what step by step process means and, to be honest, I love to learn, so was really fun doing that. Read more>>

Vic Mendoza

I got tired of dreaming dreams. Growing up, I always wanted to work in films in some way, Acting, writing or directing, but since I couldn’t really act, I started writing screenplays in grade school. There was so much to learn about scripts and storytelling. I watched a lot of films and went to bookstores and self-taught screenwriting. All this was before I even heard about screenwriting programs and learned the structure format from books and copies of scripts. Read more>>

Steven Tugman

I was taught through multiple schools, workshops, and studios. I got my Bachelor’s in Performance and Production at Texas State as well as my 2nd degree black belt in karate. I learned general utility stunts at the International stunt school. I trained as a stilt-walker and costumed character at Sea World San Antonio. Lastly stage combat and stunt workshops that I’ve taken in between. Read more>>

Jacob Guillen

I first became interested in surfboard shaping when I was a Senior in high school. I was born and raised in Orange County, but surprisingly never took up surfing until the age of 17. But once I did, I was obsessed. I surfed as much as I possibly could that whole summer leading up to my Senior year of high school. Once spring rolled around, I was still surfing just as much and falling more in love with it everyday, as anyone does with a new hobby. Read more>>

Scott George

Leatherwork in all its forms had always fascinated me. However the process of tooling leather was what really drew me to the craft. Taking a blank veg tan piece of leather and carving and tooling a work of art out of it. In 2014 when I decided to actually try my hand at some leatherwork I started with only a few basic tools, a swivel knife, a maul and some very simple stamps. I then dove head first into the wide world of YouTube looking for how to videos from other experienced leatherworkers. Read more>>

Austin Jenckes

I started making music for a living about ten years ago. I grew up in a family full of musicians and when I moved to Nashville from the PNW I noticed that songs seemed to be the biggest difference between long careers and short ones. I’ve written songs that I love, songs that I don’t love and about 500 other songs that I don’t really remember how I feel about. It’s easy for me to stay in creative mode and just hope that will move the needle, but burn out is a real thing haha. Read more>>

Heather Abbasi

I learned to model in a lot of little ways throughout my life starting at about 5 years old. At first it was playing dress-up and dancing, memorizing my favorite songs and acting out my favorite parts in movies. Then, it was taking the time to read a lot of magazines. I would try to imitate poses, facial expressions and, more. When I got old enough, I tried to imitate the make-up looks on myself. Read more>>

The Bellwethers

Creating music is a lifelong journey filled with exploration, passion, and dedication. Our path to mastering our craft involved a combination of formal education, self-discovery, and endless hours of practice. We started by learning the basics of music theory and honing our technical skills through lessons and classes. However, the true magic happened when we immersed ourselves in a variety of musical genres, and drew inspiration from diverse sources. Read more>>

Kate Church

I’ve always been the baptism by fire person and with writing it has been no different. In an effort to reawaken my long since dormant creative side, I opened up my laptop in the wee hours of an autumn morning and began typing what was to be my first novel. While I had spent many years behind a keyboard learning the necessary skilled to type an appropriate letter, resume or professional email, nothing could compare to that of writing a novel. Read more>>