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.

Aj Jones

I started my journey in the beauty industry by becoming a licensed cosmetologist, but my real education came from hands-on experience. Working behind the chair, collaborating with different artists, and stepping into the TV/film and fashion industries exposed me to a wide range of hair textures, techniques, and creative challenges. Every set, every client, and every project has been a learning experience. I’ve always approached hair not just as a skill, but as an art form—studying its movement, texture, and how it interacts with fashion and storytelling. Read more>>

Lily Harrington

Practice, patience, and good old trial and error have taught me to paint. When I was first starting out, I wasn’t very comfortable experimenting. I would stick to a singular style or medium that I felt comfortable with, which created a lot of monotony and boredom in my work. I eventually realized I had to at least try something new, and started experimenting with oil as a new medium. 12 years later, I’m still learning how to work with it, but with each new painting, I’m walking away with something new—new technique, new tool, new understanding—and I can see the impact and evolution in my work. Read more>>

Tarek Hefny

I mostly learned by doing. Although this is a departure from the academic process, I learned to appreciate its benefits. I consider myself a multi-disciplinary artist in the sense that I get to express my thoughts through different formats. Having multiple experiences in the image-making world helped me learn different visual languages and pull from a diverse pool of references. I studied oil painting. Then, shortly before graduating, I started my commercial photography business. A few years later I transitioned into cinematography and branched into post production and color grading. I believe this path helped me understand how to shape light, visually tell a story and communicate a desired message far more than if had studied mass-communication or filmmaking in school. Read more>>

Mengyi (grace) Wang

I am an international artist focusing on acrylic on canvas and I started exploring different art mediums as a child, including painting, drawing, calligraphy, photography, filmmaking, and seal carving. Growing up, I learned to do what I do through a combination of formal education, hands-on experimentation, and drawing inspiration from the cultures, experiences, and communities I’ve been a part of. My dual BAs in Art and Film & Media Studies at UC Irvine gave me a foundation in creative expression, while my master’s degrees in Global Communication at LSE and USC helped me understand the narrative and cultural dynamics that I now blend into my art. Beyond academia, my cross-cultural journey has been shaped by constant practice, self-reflection, and seeking inspiration from my surroundings whether it’s admiring nature, walking around local parks, or exploring museums and galleries. Read more>>

Jet Just Landed

I’ve always been a super fan of music in general, with Hip-Hop and R&B being the pedestal of my inspiration. I wrote my first rap at like 13, and obviously it was bad… But my ambition and strive to be a superstar was so high at that age that I practically brainwashed myself in believing that it was the greatest verse I ever heard. I didn’t start with wanting to rap. I first made beats on my phone on this app I use to have, and I downloaded samples from Chaka Khan, Al Green, and more and just chopped it up on my phone the best way I could. Looking back, it was bad, but I thought I was a genius. Once I bought FL Studio and got a MacBook for Christmas, I taught myself how to make beats and just starting selling them to my friends that were rappers. Read more>>

Hannah Tjia

I always enjoyed drawing as a child and went on to take art lessons when I was about seven years old, and during those lessons, my teacher would allow me to choose subjects that I found interesting and learn different techniques according to what each project required. While I suppose it was not necessarily a formal type of art education, it gave me the freedom to explore and create things that genuinely interested me. It also provided foundational information for some of the techniques and drawing and painting principles that I would later explore in college. Learning something basic such as the difference between light and shadow shapes made learning form language in college more digestible because I was already familiar with some of the general concepts. Read more>>

Brian Kidd

The important thing to understand about my journey as the Unipiper is that there was no grand plan or particular vision behind it. Instead, it was the result of simply following paths and pulling strings that were of interest to me and seizing upon even the most seemingly dead-end opportunities. The first step down said path was responding to a flyer which I happened upon during college advertising “Free Bagpipe Lessons”. While intriguing, the idea of playing bagpipes seemed almost too farfetched to be any real possibility, but the simplicity of the words on the page were reassuring and invited a reassessment. Read more>>

Ankur Maniar

As a fashion photographer and stylist with a background in painting/drawing, I’ve always considered myself a multidisciplinary artist. Over the years, I sought out a diverse set of professional opportunities, all of which taught me more about myself.

In college, I worked with sustainable fashion nonprofit, Remake, an organization that advocates for fair wages, human rights, and environmentalism across the global fashion supply chain. This experience shifted my perspective on luxury fashion from the very beginning and inspired me to work with conscious brands that uplift people and the planet. Read more>>

Santi Castro

it happened largely through daily immersion, and absorption into Music Listening to records, Composing each day, Transcribing, and Releasing a lot of finished songs Through constant experimentation came gradual but steady improvements; and my own Style began to bloom spontaneously In my experience – Earnestness is important, Striving, in a balanced way is important. Effort is needed. Extensive listening is needed. You may need to Study it a lot with your mind. I studied it with my mind to understand what my Heart already knew On Learning, part of it is realizing certain Learning cannot be “sped up” Certain Music cannot be learned by sitting at the Piano, only by being lived In fact, Read more>>

Sanyu Ntanda

In December 2021, my brother brought a paint-by-numbers kit to my mom’s birthday party. It was the first time I had ever seen one, and I thought to myself, “How cool! I’d love to buy a few of these kits and practice painting.” Fast forward to today, and I’ve painted hundreds of kits. My studio has become my happy place, and I’m completely obsessed with the world of paint by numbers. The process is incredibly rewarding. Try. Fail. Refine. Repeat. Read more>>

Lindsay Caputo

As with so many things, learning to become an actor, voice over artist, or singer, is on-going. You’re never “done”, rather, you’re continually understanding and honing your work. This is no matter what your age or how long you’ve been practicing your craft. When it comes to acting, my professional career began in the hands of my amazing acting instructor, Benjy Dobrin (Benjy Dobrin Studios). I actually sought him out as I was beginning to venture into voice over. My coaches recommended that I take acting to help learn how to ‘become a character’, to put it simply, so I set up my first virtual, one-on-one session. Suffice it to say, in the span of just a few lessons, I realized that I was thoroughly enjoying acting, so I switched gears and began focusing on that! Read more>>