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?

Fenrir Clover

I learned what I do about my craft by studying lyrics and listening to songs from my favorite artist I started mimicking their flows to understand how to structure a song Then I started trying to do it on my own, using my own words, and I found my flow What I could have done to speed up the learning process was definitely watch a lot more YouTube tutorials I could’ve found a mentor to study under rather than be stubborn and try to figure it out myself. There were times where I didn’t know something. Read more>>

Kelby Anderson

Countless hours of YouTube, reading books on photography & film making, and trial & error. You can’t rush the process of learning a craft, but the more practice & repetition the better. I was my only obstacle, not putting in the work when I should’ve been. Once I did put in the work I had to overcome the self doubt and lack of confidence associated with my work. Read more>>

Nicole Cromwell

Since I didn’t go to a formal art school, I’ve learned how to paint by taking online classes, workshops, and a lot of experimentation. While the experimentation process can take a bit longer, I’ve found that every “mistake” I make just goes into making my paintings richer with texture, color, and energy. My process involves writing quotes, poetry, and inspirational words on the canvas before I start painting followed by layers and layers of paint. Read more>>

Kierra Monique

Well, I would say that my whole life I have always been creative. As a kid, I would draw, paint, color in coloring books, dance and perform for my family all the time. As children I feel that’s when our imagination & dreams are at an all time high so art was my way of letting my imagination soar. I would say up until the end of elementary school that’s when I sort’ve disconnected from the art side of my life due to life just getting hard and my priorities and responsibilities changing, Read more>>

Chuck Ceraso

I studied painting and sculpture in college and then studied with a couple of artists outside of that. I find my learning process has been directly related to the amount of time I put in. Less time equals less learning. At different points the amount of time in study varies, and the equation bears out. The biggest learning came with the insight that doing studies is essential to the speed of skill growth. At first I thought of painting as always going for a finished piece with every canvas. Read more>>

Evan Alderton

My main pathway of learning in the music business that I always fall back on is trial and error. I am constantly trying to learn from what works and what doesn’t work. Knowing what I can progress with and what I need to leave behind. One thing I notice is just how rapidly the music business moves. It’s constantly changing and evolving. However, one thing always remains the same and that is; at the end of the day, if you make good art and stay true to yourself and really appreciate any success you do generate, you will be in forward progression. Read more>>

Teresa Hutton

Being a Content Creator for me personally is about bringing out who you are truly within to create phenomenal content, that will impact those around you. Setting a true foundation for ideas of what you want to focus on creating will help in the process of reaching multiple audiences. I believe having the confidence within to show myself as leading example (Change) would have helped me years ago to elevating my content Find a balance to post with purpose and really doing the inward work, so that it would come out better. Read more>>

Tara Babylon

It was important for me to train from the best environments that were possible for me. That in itself takes figuring out. My favourite fashion designers were all coming out of one place, and that was Central saint Martins in London so i needed to go there too. It took my years of rejection to get accepted, what would have sped up those years for me honestly would have been feedback. But feedback is so hard to get, they refused due to the number of applicants etc. Read more>>

Grownded Music

I learned a lot of it by myself and through gaining knowledge from friends who are fellow music producers and DJ’s. YouTube has also been an immense help to the learning process but I wish I would have been more knowledgeable of music theory and mastering music before I started my music producing journey. I think the skills of mixing and mastering are the most essential at this point in my career as an up and coming producer and DJ. I was an addict and alcoholic for the better part of a decade and recovery saved my life. Now I have nothing standing in my way of creating the music I want and deejaying shows in Denver and around the world in the future. Read more>>

Jordin Dearinger

When I was 11 years old I broke my back racing dirt bikes and was left on bedrest for 5 years because of 3 major spinal surgeries. My mom connected with my band director in middle school and he would bring instruments to my house so that I could teach myself how to play them. I learned from a really early age that music is a way better coping mechanism than pharmaceuticals. I taught myself how to play 14 instruments from ages 11 to 16, Read more>>

Aaron Bardo

I’m so lucky to be a creative in this time period. I always want to learn a new craft, and the internet is extremely helpful especially for visual learners. I grew up reading books to learn things like beading, origami, taxidermy, cooking. And now that I’m into woodworking as a passion and business, I can learn new techniques extremely fast with tools like YouTube. Read more>>

Jon Rubio

Learning how to rap and write music is the basics when it comes to doing it professionally. At first I watched interviews of my favorite rappers talking about how they started music and drew inspiration from them. The next thing I did was learned how the vocal style of Rap is different compared to singing RnB and Rock. Although most might not know this, rapping actually is a form of singing and knowing what notes to sing according to the particular beat your rapping on is essential to writing rap music. Read more>>

Emily Voss

I started my serious creative journey learning dip pen calligraphy, and while I adored doing that, having an open bottle of ink around two toddlers turned out to be a bad idea. So I invested in an iPad, the Procreate app, and some courses to help me get started with digital lettering and calligraphy. That slowly morphed into illustration classes, too, and while I’m not as proficient with illustration, I find it just as fun as lettering! Read more>>

Benjamin O’Neil

Extensive research and trial by error. We have taken the business slow to this point to allow ourselves the extra time to perfect our pepper fields, recipes and techniques, while slowly building a customer base. Our drive to offer healthy, clean foods, and our love for spice keeps our business moving forward. We have focused on quality over quantity, and we feel this process has allowed us to build a solid customer base. Read more>>

Rayann Marie

I started my photography journey by taking a film course in high school and completely fell in love. Every free moment I had was spent in the dark room and because of that I have a greater appreciation for digital photography. Any one who has shot and developed their own film knows that it is a long and sometimes frustrating process but I wouldn’t be the photographer I am today without it. I learned patience, composure, and humility, along with how to truly create art. Read more>>

Blake Koala

A lot of trial and error. A lot of people are scared just to post something because it’s not perfect in their mind but sometimes the most perfect thing ends up doing the worst in the most spontaneous does the best. Being your true genuine self is the best form of content. Biggest obstacle I face is part of my learning disability. I’m dyslexic, so a lot of the times videos that I do I have to proofread and make sure I’m pronouncing certain words correctly most of the time which takes a lot longer to make an edit videos. Read more>>

Nicolle Swims

I started playing saxophone at the time / no idea how I picked that up. I wanted to play guitar even before then. I was 12. I finally had the courage to tell my mom that was actually the instrument I wanted to play and she put me in lessons right away- she’s always been so supportive. After my first lesson I knew then and there that this was going to be my entire life and my eternal love. The speed in which I learned was just fine, I just wish I knew that the term “skill” means something different to everyone and just because I couldn’t shred didn’t mean I was doing anything wrong. Read more>>

Aaron Day

Learning about the craft came from years of experience. I was in band throughout middle school and high school so music came natural to me. Learning about music production and mixing came from creating and recording hundreds of records for multiple artists and myself. I spent countless hours watching Youtube videos, tutorials, and Masterclass videos to be good at as a mix engineer and producer. Until I created my own sound. It also came from a lot of trail and errors. Read more>>

Cheryl Spaid

I have always loved to draw and doodle. For me, drawing was (and is) relaxing and enjoyable. I had my first and only in-person art lessons when I was 13. They lasted all of 6 weeks and then we moved out of the area. After that life took over. I married and spent the next 40 years raising and educating seven children. It wasn’t until my youngest graduated high school that I decided it was time to draw again. Read more>>

Krista Urbana

As a wee one, I remember drawing, coloring, and tracing a lot, eventually, I started to visually copy what I saw the best I could, anything that interested me, usually animals. In high school, I took an art class that taught us various pen and pencil techniques, fun challenges, and the first time I ever got to try painting! I fell in love with it, but I struggled with acrylics and I didn’t really like them. After graduating I took a few art classes at the community college—a beginner’s class in oil painting, an art history class, and photography. Read more>>

Matt Ebbers

My journey learning photography and video production have been almost entirely self-taught because I never expected either to become my career. I always say that I graduated from the “YouTube School of Visual Arts”. The one thing that would have sped up my learning process would be realizing earlier that producing visuals was my calling. I went to school for Audio Production, so visuals were always secondary in support of audio as my primary pursuit. Read more>>

Nina Klaser

I always was an artist and I went to college to earn my degree in Painting from the University of North Texas in 2016. After I graduated, I went into the fine art world of art restoration and conservation and I really did love it but the lifestyle and the people I was working with, really didn’t mesh well with my personality. Once I realized that I wasn’t happy with my career and began to refocus and figure out what would really make me happy. Read more>>

Renee Lopez

I am a self taught photographer so it took discipline and consistency! I had to push myself to shoot all the time. I wanted to shoot live music, and in my opinion it’s one of the hardest lanes to shoot in photography. So I was showing shows all the time as much as possible. I think finding a mentor and someone to shoot with who had the skills I was looking for would of pushed me forward more quickly. The obstacles that stood in my way we’re being shy about getting to the front of the show, or men stepping in front on my whileI was shooting. I had to learn to be more aggressive and speak up for myself. Because most of the time it was all men and me shooting a show. Read more>>

Trey Gibson

With music it’s really about your influences and who you grew up listening to. My pops listened to mainly jazz and old school hip hop and my mom neosoul and gospel. So Im inspired by certain chords and sounds which isn’t really something I learn, it just happened. Writing and rapping are different though. Practicing is the move. Listening to great musicians you realize they make difficult things look easy. I’m always just working towards that. Read more>>

Ruthie Henderson

I grew up in a small town in Wyoming where artistic ventures were not at the forefront of the community. There were not a lot of photographers or opportunities to learn artistic skills. I always had an interest in taking pictures, but very quickly realized that I would have to teach myself the techniques I needed to know. I started learning photoshop in middle school through online tutorials. My first camera was a junky point-and-shoot camera passed down to me by my sister. Read more>>

Ananda Wilson

I’ve always been nosy. Unintentionally memorizing the smells of healing plants and medicinal oils as a child, opening every shampoo bottle in the drugstore searching for the right scent (and rejecting the wrong ones), delighting in magic markers and erasers made with fragranced ink, and concocting unique scents for holiday gifts like handmade candles or body care. It seemed that scent was sort of the secret power of the universe that made experiences more enchanted. It taught me to use it as a tool, as in the case of learning plant identification. Read more>>

Kristina Rust

I have always loved photography and have had a camera in my hand since my teenage years. It was after I had children that I decided to really learn the craft. The first photography class I took was a film photography class in San Francisco and it was before digital cameras were affordable and mainstream (I’m dating myself). In this class I learned how to operate my camera, exposure settings, and composition, as well as basic darkroom techniques like developing film and making prints. Read more>>

Gary Jackson

I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis in October of 2013, Soon after being diagnosed I started to lose my sight through out the day. and sometimes all day, due to muscle weakness. In 2019, I stumbled into a Hobby Lobby in Houston Texas, purchased a pack of five canvases, oil paint kit and brushes. Today my favorite past time is painting and writing poetry to share with the world. Read more>>