Wanting to be an artist or creative is step one. Following through means investing in learning your craft, but we’ve heard from so many aspiring artists and creatives who feel unsure about where to start and so we’re incredibly grateful to the artists and creatives who’ve agreed to share their stories of how they learned their craft.

Katey Carlis

Learning the craft of drawing is a lifelong pursuit. Committing to it means engaging deeply in the pleasure and challenge of exploring, refining, expanding the set of skills that help us become more versatile, confident, clear, creative as draftspeople. Read more>>

Lauryn Levette

As a child, I started by drawing my favorite cartoons. I always doodled on notebooks, homework, church pamphlets, any piece of paper I could find. I would put a piece of paper to the tv screen and trace cartoons, as I grew older I learned how to draw characters from step by step books and YouTube videos. Read more>>

Lavender Fire

If we’re talking about songwriting, I learned it from writing a lot of awful songs so I could get to the good stuff. See, I started out as a poet and I remember my first attempts at songwriting were nothing more than putting my poems to music. It took years of figuring out that writing a pop song and writing poetry are two different things. Read more>>

Hew Jonsson

My introduction to woodworking came in Junior High school. My school had a small shop and we got a nice introduction to hand tools and working with multiple different mediums (wood, plastic, leather, metal etc.). Read more>>

XIAOYANG WANG

I learnt the craft both from the school and by teaching myself, and from the street. I learnt Composition and Music Production skills by attending schools in Los Angeles and Seattle, and I have a master’s degree in Film Composition. School teaching was definitely helpful. Read more>>

Shruti Ghatak

My very first influences were my mother and my surroundings. She was a musician and gifted craftperson who introduced me to Batik, embroidery, bandhni and sewing. Those tactile experiences of making something with my hands were somethng I was deeply drawn to. I also grew up in a place surrounded by many terracotta temples with beautiful relief sculptures steeped in ancient mythologies and folklores. Read more>>

Yeongeun Lee

I learned ceramics in college for the first time. On the first day of the practical class, I learned how to make small objects that looked like a ball and a box. The process was complicated and had many restrictions to avoid making cracks. I made some objects with careful touch and heart during the semester. Read more>>

Jonathan McKenzie

As a teenager, I first heard it on the radio, and when I finally got the chance to see it in person, I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if I could make people dance too.’ That moment sparked my passion and set me on this journey. Read more>>

Rita Anthony

My photographic journey started as a love of taking photos everywhere I would go. Back then it was film and you would take a picture and have to wait until the roll was full and take the film to be developed and hope that they turned out ok. Read more>>

Daylight Shooters

We came together as a team, sharing our resources and skills to make the filming and editing process work smoothly.’** Want me to make it sound more professional or more casual Read more>>

Dora HyunJung Kim

From a young age, I loved drawing and making things with my hands. The process of creating something with different materials—and seeing the results take shape—made me realize that I wanted to become someone who could make beautiful and useful things. This led me to study Product Design in Korea, where I had the opportunity to explore furniture, textiles, and ceramics. Read more>>

Sakshi Doshi

How did you learn to do what you do? I first learned printmaking during my undergraduate studies in India, where studio practice introduced me to the craft and its possibilities. My foundation came through hands-on experimentation and guided exploration within the university setting. Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? Read more>>

Selema De Bellis

I learned what I do by observing other contemporary painters. My biggest learning moments are when I’m looking at a painting by Inka Essenhigh or Emily Mae Smith, and I get a feeling like won’t be able to sleep until I try to emulate a certain visual effect that’s in their paintings. Read more>>

Dana Oberdan

– Music has been a part of my life since I was a small child. I have sung ever since I can remember, and learnt the piano when I was about 8 years old. – I started songwriting when I was 16 years old. Read more>>

Madilyn Klick

I first got into photography when I took a film photography class in college in 2019, and I immediately fell in love with it. I really enjoyed the process of capturing moments in time that we can look back on, and I loved learning each step of developing, enlarging, and printing photos. Read more>>

John Mazlish

I started my learning process by simply shooting. A lot. I started photography before the digital era, and I think the necessity of learning the basic rules and limitations of shooting film helped me to learn the craft more thoroughly. Once I internalized these rules fully, then I could break them in creative ways. Read more>>