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.

Alex Kidd

Learning the steel guitar presents unique challenges compared to the majority of other instruments. It is a non-standard instrument with a limited amount of resources available and a limited amount of musicians who are able to conduct in-person teaching. I was able to key in on specific internet forums, digital video libraries, and contacting key individuals for advice during the learning process. Read more>>

Angela Chong

My college major was actually in VFX, not motion graphics. I only took basic motion classes to get familiar with the interface and foundational concepts as part of the curriculum. However, most of my knowledge in motion graphics was acquired on the job. Read more>>

Angelica Monroy

Angie: I’ve always known I wanted to somehow be involved with music. As a little girl, that was all I talked about, all I longed for and eventually, my parents caved and agreed to get me a guitar. I’ve been writing music since I first learned how to pick up a writing utensil and the rest is history!! Listening and learning songs from some of my favorite bands have shaped me into the writer I am today. The only thing that ever stood in the way of learning would be time! Especially as we get older, time seems to slip right through my hands these days. Read more>>

Anitah Diggs

I’ve learned photography just by doing. I joined my high school’s yearbook class when I was a sophomore and learned how to take a “good” photo for the first time by being apart of that experience. Post high school, everything I’ve wanted to know about with photography is mainly something I just learned by myself. I’ve just been guided by the images that I’ve always wanted to create, and just learned each specific editing or shooting tactic that those photographers or editors would use. Read more>>

Anthony Jones

The short version of me learning how I learned to do what I do is one night in 2008, I was in 9th grade at the time. I didn’t really have that many friends then. I spent a lot of time on the computer. I found some fanart of Disney “Gargoyles” and I thought to myself, “wouldn’t It be cool to recreate this?”. So I printed the image of “Brooklyn” the gargoyle out and sat it side by side to my sketchbook and started sketching away at it! It took me a couple of hours to finish, and then I took It to my mother and showed her before she was getting ready for bed. Read more>>

April Maxey

I went to an art school that focused more on experimental arthouse films instead of a film school that focused on a more commercial filmmaking approach, so we had to be scrappy. Each of us had to learn how to do every role on set. I did casting, sound, camera, gaffing, production design, and editing. This was all with no money and everyone helping each other on all our different projects. After Pratt, I continued to work on various sets, starting as a 2nd Camera Assistant, and working my way up to being a Director of Photography, while always directing and editing indie short films and music videos on the side. Read more>>

Bee Nix

Over the past ten years or so, i have aquired and strengthened many skills via higher education, and the rest have been self-taught or developed directly with work. Much of the work i have done to learn the basics of this or that was unpaid work done for the experience and knowledge, always while working different paid jobs. Usually i’ve worked service industry jobs for money, while on the side did video work, animation, woodworking, simple electronics or graphic design for other artists. Read more>>

Ben Grijalva

Reps, reps, and more reps. I wholeheartedly believe it is because of the repetitions I’ve completed the past eight years working with a camera that I can say I’ve mastered many aspects of my craft. I hold the concept of putting a thousand hours in to truly master a skill to be true, especially after seeing what I could do solely by learning the ins and outs of my camera. I was always researching, learning, and then applying newfound knowledge with what I had. With every repetition my abilities behind the camera were only bound to become stronger. Read more>>

Brian Day

I’ve long been a student of photography and those who practice the craft at a high level, but I feel I’ve learned the most by practice, experimentation, and failure. We live in a world that encourages high productivity and lots of content, but there is something to be said for being obsessed with the multifaceted art of learning. This includes studying the masters, understanding what people see as the established rules of the craft, but then going beyond that to really master one’s tools, develop an irrational confidence in ideas and a willingness to test them out, making notes or retaining lessons from what went well and what didn’t with those ideas, and then developing a sense of alchemy to blend techniques and concepts in ways that morph into some sort of interesting perspective. Read more>>

Brian Kavinsky

I started drawing as a child as a way to distract myself from the chaos in my household. By middle school I was selling pictures to my classmates. Around that time I also got very well with portrait drawing. By high school I was taking graphic design classes. My talent has been kept dormant since then for the majority of my life until it was waken up by my pursuit as a content creator. Read more>>

Bruce Avery Ii

How I learned to do what I do…I decided to go to school for Digital Film and Visual Arts. I looked into A few different schools until I came across Mediatech Institute of Houston. I Already received my Associate’s Degree in Audio Engineering and while doing so I met a few teachers who also worked at this school as well so I decided to check the school out and that was the best decision I have made. I Currently Still Attend And will Be Graduating soon Read more>>

Cade Thompson

I learned most of what I do through hands on experience or what was essentially a trial by fire. Going throughout the world of a working creative, the thing that I have found to be the most important piece of advice is learning to enjoy the process. Having career goals and striving to make a living is great and still very helpful, but if you have found an excitement for what you can create and a joy for bringing it to life all of the practical aspects of the profession are going to comes so much easier to you. Read more>>

Catherine Rupan Mapp

I started drawing as soon as I could hold a crayon. Walls, papers, sidewalks, furniture; honestly I was a pretty destructive little kid who constantly scribbled flowers everywhere. There’s definitely a level of irony to it as well since I’m now doing a lot of murals here in Baltimore City. Drawing was a skill that I continued to practice almost daily throughout school. Then it eventually led me to MICA where I dove into all the new materials I hadn’t worked with before as a sculpture major: wood, metal, clay, concrete and plaster, fiber, etc. Read more>>

Christopher Morin

I’m a self taught musician and started playing drums when I was 13. I would learn by ear listening/playing to Nirvana mostly, and making shameful attempts to play along to Led Zeppelin & Blink 182. Within a year or 2, I started learning riffs on my best friend’s guitar and got my own not long after. The guitar was just so much more practical to practice at any point day or night compared to a drum set stealing any sense of peace from anyone in the house. Read more>>

Dana Cox

I think everyone knows how to make comics to some degree. The other day, I was hanging out with my friend’s five-year-old daughter, and we made a comic together about going to the park and seeing a spider eat a fly. It was six pages long and had everything a good story needs: friendship, drama, intrigue, spiders… Making comics isn’t hard. It’s fun! What was hard to learn was the more abstract stuff—how to not be so self-conscious, how to be vulnerable, how to share work even when you think it’s kind of bad, how to keep going when you’re pretty sure you suck. Read more>>

Dave Bradley

Honestly, trial and error is the only way to learn. The more things you try, the more things you’ll fail at, which will give you more to learn from in the end. I also believe knowing how to speak to people will help you a lot in the long run, you will need to ask for help at some point. There is no path to success by your lonesome. Read more>>

Dom King

My skillset, was developed secretly over time. I only say “secretly” because I believe that the only way I have learned to make music in the way that I do, is because of watching people that care deeply about art, making it or teaching it. For instance, I was in church as a kid a lot and did not want to be there. I preferred video games like most kids. But the Sundays when my favorite singer (Karisma Evans) would go up to sing, it would captivate my entire spirit for 15-30 minutes. Read more>>

Dominic White

My interest in music started in junior high school when my parents bought me a Radio Shack guitar. It was a 3/4 size guitar and was not of the highest quality but I loved it. Pretty soon it was covered in skate stickers like I thought a guitar should be. Pretty soon I was playing Green Day, Metallica and Smashing Pumpkins songs on it. I also played in the high school jazz band. I pursued jazz guitar in high school while still playing rock and heavy metal on it. Read more>>

Erica Andrus

That’s an interesting question. I just kind of dove in. I started recording videos of things I like to see or places that I wanted to visit. My phone has a standard video editing application that I started playing with initially. I watched a lot of how to videos on YouTube and also looked at how other content creators were putting their videos together. I drew some inspiration from them. Read more>>

Gabriel Rivas

It is quite a story, actually. I came to the US to study music mixing in college, and I ended up falling for audio editing for movies. It was through my roommate, who at that time was studying for an MFA in film production, that I was introduced to her professor, who turned out to be a re-recording mixer at my college’s dub stage. His name is Dave. I was not entirely sure what audio post was, but I asked him if I could “shadow” him while he mixed. Read more>>

Gia Ruiz

When I think of what I do, it’s the intersection of generations of makers and storytellers. My great grandma taught my mom how to sew and crochet, and then she taught me. My dad is just this really great storyteller, and as a kid I loved hearing about his wild antics growing up. I think I am the product of all of that. I wish I had seen these lessons as the gifts they really were. I didn’t really embrace the fiber arts or storytelling until I was an adult. I do regret not developing these skills sooner. Read more>>

Grace Avery

I come from a family where most of them are artistic and hold art related jobs and hobbies. I personally have been creating things with my hands for as long as I can remember. My first memory of wanting to learn to crochet was on Halloween when I was around 7 years old. Every year after Trick-or-Treating, my family would make my godmother’s house our last stop. We would visit and hand out her candy and one time while we were there, she was crocheting a blanket. I was watching her intently trying to figure out how she was doing it. I tried to do it myself a few days later without much success. Read more>>

Hamlet Hayrapetyan

Photography involves working with lighting and Shadows, and since I have a background as a 3D visualizer, this made it easier for me to start taking photos and to ‘SEE’ the light through my camera lens. Read more>>

Heather Peters

I had been trying to learn how to make paper myself for many years, but had not found a path to learn this craft. Through happenstance I got an internship at a fine art studio, and on my first morning there the owner of the studio said, “Hey, do you want to make paper? Our papermaker just retired, and there is no one running the paper studio.” So I said yes, and spent the next three years working in that paper studio as much as I could before moving on to grad school. Read more>>

Ian Hicks

Back in 2001 a friend showed me Fruity Loops 3. Fruity Loops was an early version of the music software that many electronic music producers know and love today. A lot of my friends gave up on music early in life, because they hated taking music lessons. The tedious scales and tasks assigned to them by instructors to improve their skills crushed their passion.  Read more>>

Ian Wiese

I spent a lot of time (and money) in the academic space. Currently, I have received my Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate of Musical Arts all in Composition. In this space, as much as you rely on your professors and what they’re teaching you, you are also required to become an autodidact. There are theory texts and concepts that professors won’t teach you because there isn’t enough time, and that time is better used to spread the wealth to everyone as best as possible. Read more>>

Janne Larsen

I grew up in a very rural part of the country where we grew, preserved, and raised our own food. When I left for college, I was relieved to be free of the chore of weeding. Yet, here I am, daily communing with plants. It seems you can never escape your past. The joy I find in discovering the color potential in plants is like uncovering hidden treasures. This passion led me to my artistic purpose: creating connections between people and the plants around them. Read more>>

Jay Gaskin

Honestly, I learned how to do what I do (and I’m still learning) from my favorite YouTube commentators and podcasters. As for the second part of this question, I don’t have an answer at the moment since I’m still in the early stages of developing my show and honing my craft. The most essential skills I’ve learned from doing my live show include conducting thorough research so I know what I’m talking about and using credible sources to ensure the information I share with my audience is accurate and reliable. Read more>>

Jenna Leske

I have been creating art all my life, but I guess I began my journey as a tattoo artist when I started seriously considering art as a career while attending Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, class of ’08. I was a studio art major and was awarded the Miriam F. Carpenter Prize for the best body of work my senior year for a series of black-and-white self-portrait photographs. Read more>>