Often there is no book or course to learn how to do what you want to do – so how artists and creatives overcome such challenges? How have some of the most talented artists and creatives in the community managed to learn their craft?

Billy Tighe

I learned how to do what I do with the help of countless educators, family members, friends and mentors. I’m still learning how to do what I do and I make mistakes all the time. What’s most engaging about being an artist is that the learning is never done. We’re always seeking new ways to harness our skills and effectively communicate our vision. I’m sure there are countless ways I could have sped up my learning process. Taking more classes, paying more attention in the classes I did take. Read more>>

Ashley Monique

I was a very creative child. I loved all kinds of arts and crafts. I often got in trouble for doodling on the walls and cutting up paper and my clothes. My mother was a seamstress, so, growing up she made a lot of our clothes. As I grew older, if we wanted something made, she would have my siblings and I pin the pattern and cut it out, and she would sew it. I am a visual learner, so cutting out patterns really helped me in my craft. Read more>>

Bridget Shaw

I learned about photography super early in life. Growing up with artists in the family my creative pursuits were always encouraged. I got my first camera when I was a kid, maybe age 8 or 9, and that 35mm Canon EOS Rebel changed the trajectory of my life course forever. I learned how to photograph by just wanting to make photos. Read more>>

Payton Riley

I was always a singer — I was practically singing as soon as I was talking. My Mom put me in voice lessons at age 7 and then at 9 years old, I started learning how to write songs, and that has become my passion. My voice coach told me that if I wanted to sing my songs on big stages, I needed to learn how to play an instrument, so at age 9, I started learning how to play guitar. I think I should have started playing guitar even earlier and spent more time on it to learn it more quickly. Read more>>

Dillon Weishuhn

Learning to shoot photos of interesting places required two separate endeavors. One is obviously, shooting and editing the photo of the cool thing in question, but before you can do that you have to find the cool thing, which is no easy task in itself. To shoot and edit photos I started with my phone and then moved on to a cropped sensor camera and then eventually a full frame. Along the way, I watched copious amounts of YouTube videos to learn new skills and troubleshoot old ones. Read more>>

Cole Pates

I believe we all have a specific calling in life. I want to give people a reason to dream, be inspired, and find a way to open their minds to something they might have thought was impossible. My craft of Follow Cam Operating started as a hobby filming my brother on the slopes and slowly developed into a career I would have never even thought about. Read more>>

Kristin Roy

I was stationed in the interior Alaska as a civil engineer air force officer. During the winter months there is little sunlight with arctic temperatures. I gave birth to my first son in the middle of the winter. Between the long nights, darkness and family thousand of miles away, I needed something to help my sanity a new mom. Before my career I used to spend countless hours drawing and doing art. When I joined the air force, and especially a mom, I had a hard time finding the chance to fulfill my need for art. Crocheting became my artistic outlet that I desperately needed. Read more>>

Lakisha Ginyard Louissaint

As a visual learner, it’s fairly easy for me to observe, learn, & execute to the best of my ability; however, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have been in such a rush. I would have studied a little more. I would have waited until I had the budget needed to avoid the overwhelming stress that I experienced to find budget to film & feed my cast & crew each time we filmed. But the love for becoming a director & producer had a tight grip on me. Read more>>

Lenin Rincon Jr

I started by downloading free audio software. I kept extending my free software and then learning new software. In 11th grade I got into a high school that offered beat making class. 12th grade I assisted in teaching fellow students how to make beats and record their own tracks. The music teacher Mr. Luffred, I have to mention because he did a great deal of believing in me and letting me bring home different softwares, the full versions. He even allowed me to isolate with a real synthesizer. Read more>>

Martina Rosenthal

I think I’ve been practicing for the last 30 years. I’ve always been visually curious and restless; through the years, that same creative eye just got sharper and more mature. I don’t really believe in cutting corners or speeding things up. Things just take their natural course. I can confidently look back and understand why every stage had a meaning and purpose. Some of the things I execute today were things I wrote down 10 years ago. Read more>>

Caitlyn Behnke

I’ve always liked learning things through the process of trial and error, and that’s exactly how I taught myself jewelry making. It’s taken almost three years to get to the skill level I’m currently at in regards to working with wire and I still feel like I have so much to improve upon. I think taking a class from another local artist could have possibly sped up the learning process, but I couldn’t find any at the time. Read more>>

Cj Alicea

Learning really came natural. God was the one to bless with me with my gift of drumming and music. For music production most of it was just sitting there and doing trial and error. Surrounding yourself with people who can push you and expose you to bettering your craft is important too. Speeding up the process in a sense I don’t like that. I feel like everyone has their own pace and how you wanna learn depends on your dedication to what you do. Read more>>

Ejaye

Im pretty much self taught, I had some help learning music theory and the basics of music creation from my brother Filth. He helped a lot. To speed it up I should have listened to him more and applied myself a little harder at the beginning for sure haha. The most essential was definitely establishing groove and bounce, i think it goes a long way with making unique beats. the obstacles that stood in the way were school and working for sure and trying to balance making music and everything else in life. Read more>>

Aniya Gary

I’ve been singing ever since I can remember. I used to watch 106 and Park on BET & TRL on MTV and these shows really made me want to become a singer. When I was 7, I got my first lead in my schools Christmas play. I was not technically trained and never had voice lessons. Overtime, I’d listen to my favorite artist and mimic what they did. I would listen to their songs over and over until I got them down. Read more>>

Maximiliano Carrillo

I learned how to do photography in high school. I took a photography class all my years of high school, from there I started sharing my work on Instagram. Over time I learned how tdxo optimize my social media growth. Learning more about how social media worked and would of token more risks on making different types of posts to see what worked and what didn’t. Not sure if you would consider consistency a skill, but that did play a big part. Having to go to school five days a week and working part time. Read more>>

Paul Richmond

I was very lucky that my parents recognized my interest in art at an early age. They found an artist named Linda Regula who took me on as her student just before my fourth birthday, so I was learning to oil paint while most kids were still drawing with crayons. I am forever grateful for that opportunity and I believe it shaped the rest of my life. I knew from the start that I wanted to be an artist and I never had a backup plan. Read more>>

Mark Kroos

I’ve been playing music since around the age of 12 when I first picked up the guitar. I had always enjoyed singing prior to that and I would plunk around on the piano sometimes, but I was very geared toward sports as a child. Then when I didn’t make the basketball team in 7th grade, I really began to focus on guitar, on music, fell in love with punk rock :-) Read more>>

Marni Fara

I started dabbling in film photography as a young child. I always loved exploring nature and capturing moments in time on my adventures. I learned to develop film and play with light in ways that met my aesthetic. I was late to the digital photography game, but after college when I was in the beginning of my first career as a climate scientist, I missed my passion for photography. I took a few photography classes in DC, and later took editing classes online. Read more>>

Angela Fedrick-Lewis

I learned an important principal years ago. That principal is “anything worth pursuing is worth learning.” There is worth in the gifts that we all have within us and I believe it is our responsibility to develop those gifts. For me, bridging the gift of connecting with people and writing became a goal that shaped my high school and college studies. Read more>>

Stacy Heitman

After I graduated from the Aveda Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota I headed out west to Beverly Hills, California to start my advanced training program. I assisted three very busy colorists full time and did my advanced training program there as well. Read more>>

juju dang

Using fluid acrylics as a medium can be quite challenging. Anyone can do it but not everyone can make it look good. As a self-taught artist, I spent a good year fiddling with my recipe and layering my paints in a certain way so that they don’t end up looking like mud after being poured. I watched videos of other artists and used IG to try to catch their secrets. Read more>>

Christy Martinho

I am a self-taught watercolor and gouache artist and I learned to do what I do by doing it. I remember painting as a kid, and I even took oil painting classes. But it was only at the age of 25 that I bought a sketchbook and a watercolor palette with my real grown-up money. Knowing what I know now, I would have spent more time painting. Read more>>

Aiyi Cheng

From the very beginning of my practice, I found myself in love with freeing my subconscious mind and letting it create abstract forms, mysterious creatures, minimal shapes, and compositions. I discovered that working intuitively and subconsciously interests and suits me, and gives me opportunities to experiment creatively throughout the practice constantly. Read more>>

Jeff Pittman

I learned how to do leatherwork by utilizing skills of sewing, I had learned in my youth, and skills of leather tooling from watching online videos. With what I now know about leatherwork, I wish I would have reached out for mentorship early on by the professionals I have met along the way. The most essential skill is the drive to do things on my own. The only real obstacles have been starting costs and building clientele. Read more>>

Bill Kopp

Growing up I was a cartoonist and made films as well. I attended the California Institute of the Arts as a painter innitially but switched my major into animation my second year. I buried myself in animation and made 2 films that both won Academy Awards. Storytelling and animation timing and drawing were and still are the main skills. But breaking into digital animation has changed everything. Now I am busy making my own cartoons outside the studio system. It’s faster and vastly more inexpensive and the quality is top-notch. Read more>>

Ezra Jordan

I’ve been set on a career in music for as long as I can remember. I come from a musical family and have always thought of music not only as something that I love, but something serious and important that can be a career as much as any other traditional line of work. Because of my early exposure to music from this perspective, as well as taking lessons starting from the age of 4, I developed a lot of the practical skills for making music pretty early on. Read more>>

Mia Delamar

I’ve been singing since I could speak and I grew up watching some of the most excellent musicians I know give their all every Sunday service and Wednesday Night Bible Study. I taught myself piano when I was around ten years old. I also tried to teach myself guitar but that turned out to be unsuccessful. I’m still trying to learn today but can’t seem to keep my nails short enough haha. I was a chorus kid and through that I learned the basics of music theory. However, the bulk of my training came during my years in college at Belmont University. Read more>>

Carla Andreina Ponceleon

There’s two parts to this question because I have truly fallen in love with my career (Marketing/Graphic Design/Social Media Management) as well as, health & fitness. My career has been a blessing throughout the years. I graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale 2011, and I have been working in the field still to this day. I have had the opportunity of using this career in every type of field, from clothing to food, to the entertainment industry, etc. Read more>>

Leslie Hopwood

Beginning mini-makers enter the craft at a variety of ages and abilities, this is one of the things that make miniatures so interesting. A mini-maker who tells you they’ve been doing it since childhood probably began crafting tiny things from paper and scraps of fabrics and wood. Adults entering the craft often begin with a kit and once they have their fingers used to holding little stuff begin to branch off to what is most interesting to them. Read more>>

Jared Sampson

I started working with my dad building wooden gliders when I was about five years old, and we eventually completed several projects together. Learning to make things with him was a confidence builder, and got me interested in the craft. Once I moved into a house, I quickly found the “maker” passion again as an adult. Once I acquired more tools I began making simple projects like American flags, and eventually experimented with epoxy resin – that led me to where I am now, honestly. Read more>>