One of the most daunting aspects of pursing a creative or artistic career for many aspiring artists is not knowing how to learn the craft. So, we asked some very talented artists and creatives to talk to us about how they learned their crafts and we hope their stories will help you in your journey.
George Kalajian
Everything I have ever learned in my life has been either from my dad, or while I was standing next to him. I consider myself eternally lucky, that I was i the unique position to receive data passed down through 5 generations of my family. This is all thanks to my dad and his true love of the art of pleating. From a very young age, going to work and pleating were both always part of my life. I was born in Lebanon, and lived there until I was five years old. At the age of five, my family moved to NYC. From then on, I spent most of my time in my fathers factories where he was manufacturing clothing. Read more>>
Jarratt Damn
10 years of doing this and I am still learning…Lol But answer the question, I kinda just got thrown in the deep end. One of the first podcast I was on, I was “drafted” to be the technical producer and content creator. I was like…okay, I guess I am doing this. So I went to “YouTube University” and watched as much content as possible to help me. Worked at it everyday to get better. But if I am being honest, I could have learned more if I let go of my pride and asked people. Especially people I knew in the industry. If you don’t ask for help, how can you get better? Read more>>
Caroline Mujica
As a teenager, I was grounded quite often- especially through my 11th grade year. I spent many Friday nights at home instead of out with my friends. My sister, who was 4 years older, would come home from college most weekends, but would go out with her friends most nights. She’d leave her collection of makeup she used to get ready and I’d spend most of those nights rummaging through her makeup and using it to learn how to do makeup. Youtube was my favorite for learning makeup techniques because I’ve always been a visual learner. At first, my sister was upset that I’d go through her makeup, but then one day, I asked her if I could do her makeup and to our surprise, it came out alright. I began doing her makeup for her nights out to the club. I still didn’t have makeup of my own, so I’d use her products, and she became my first “client.” Read more>>
Joe Mallory
It’s difficult to pinpoint how I learned about making art, as it has come from many inspirations, and feels like this creative energy has always been within me. I owe much of my creativity to my family. My mother went to school for art and is a talented illustrator, painter, and all-around creative. She has helped me in so many ways, always giving me constructive critiques on my work when I asked for it and certainly helping me to learn how to draw figures and shapes, for instance. My grandfather on my father’s side was a renaissance man; he was an artist and art collector, among many other things, and he was also a personal friend of Dr. Seuss. He also opened an art gallery called the Mallory Gallery in Rancho Santa Fe, CA, in the 80’s. He and my grandmother lived up the street from our home and had an eclectic artist house in an otherwise “normal” neighborhood. The house was filled with every inch of the walls – and ceiling – with large, original surrealist paintings and sculptures. Their house was always a huge inspiration to me. Also, my uncle Morgan, my father’s brother, opened and owned a frame shop and art gallery, the Corner Frame Shop, in Encinitas, California. Art and creativity were always celebrated and appreciated in our family.I owe it to my parents and family for always encouraging and appreciating my creativity while growing up. Read more>>
Nadia Pricia Rey
Active practice. As a multi-hyphenate creative, my learning has been trial centric. I have spent years honing my crafts of music creation and digital design purely out of passion. Initially, being raised in music and dance, as a child of an educator/creative and then branching into my affinity for music during my high-school years : time has been essential to developing my artistry. Read more>>
Dj Bigg Rich
It was basically alot of trial and error, just trying things and seeing what certain things do consistently, practice makes perfect is a cliche phrase but it’s real, i just had to mess around with djing and make it comfortable enough for me, i wasnt around other djs coming up when i first started, i never went to clubs, bars events etc where i could see another DJ spinning, im a nerd so i really just stayed home my first few years of tryna be a DJ messing around with dj programs and doing mixtapes trying to learn how to chop & screw songs because the Houston music culture is what i was heavily into at the time, DJ Screw was my influence so i was trying to be like him in my own way, so having that influence drove me to learn, Read more>>
David Acuff
I’m a huge believer in the power of the classroom! I went to film school for Directing and Editing. I’ve taken no less than seven screenwriting classes along the way. I’ve taken a voiceover class and two stand-up comedy classes. Here’s the thing, what that does is it shortens the trial and error, banging your head against a wall time significantly. Yes, you can go out and teach yourself how to make movies or tell jokes on stage. And it might take ten years of stumbling and bumbling and failing forward. Or you can take some classes and shortcut that learning curve by studying under someone who has done the work and condensed it into learnable/teachable steps. Read more>>
Brittany Selah Lee-bey
My training and knowledge of reading instruction has been a long journey. I began teaching middle and high school students at Oak Hill Youth Detention Center (now New Beginnings) in 2007. It was working here that I realized I wanted to help students build their literacy skills. From there, I began reading anything I could get my hands on that would help me with my aim. Eventually, I went back to school for a master’s in special education and worked with students with learning disabilities, many of whom were struggling readers. But it wasn’t until 2018 that I decided to study literacy. I enrolled in another graduate program, this one for literacy instruction. The knowledge I gained from this program has been invaluable to the students I serve. Read more>>
Effy Redman
I have been writing and editing professionally my entire adult life, but decided to study the craft of memoir-writing intensively by doing an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in memoir. Eight years after I completed my MFA, my first memoir Saving Face–a queer disability coming-of-age narrative–was published by Vine Leaves Press. My learning process was perhaps slower than it could have been because, well, life happened along the way! I don’t think I could have sped up the process of writing and publishing my first book though. I needed those years to incubate my memoir. But I do hope my second book will take less time to reach readers! Rewriting, processing editorial feedback, and eventually detaching from the emotional content of this book were essential to my process. Nonfiction is a vulnerable genre, both for the author and for the real people portrayed on the page; this vulnerability meant that I didn’t always have the creative freedom to explore certain events into their deepest points, at least not in the final draft. Read more>>
Dana Lockhart
Most writers are introverts. You can successfully be an introverted author, but the best way for writers to succeed is by being collaborative: sharing knowledge, ideas, and safe spaces. It can be scary to get started and to put yourself out there, but it really makes all the difference in the world. You can do it all on your own, sure, as you probably have done all your life. But it’s a lot easier with help. I had reached that breaking point myself. I was muddling through trying to get published. A vanity publisher had tried to scam me once (luckily I didn’t fall for it) and I just came off a fresh loss in a publishing contest that would have awarded me a small advance if I had won. It was back to the querying board, or to try and figure out self-publishing by myself. I was the only serious writer I knew, and felt overwhelmed by how much I had to learn about the publishing industry to try and get my foot in the door. At just the right time, I discovered my local writers guild and I cannot imagine the struggle I would have gone through if not for their help. Read more>>
Matthew Keith
I’ve always been interested in photography and film. My parents and one of my babysitters encouraged me. I graduated from New York University’s film school, but am also self-taught. I researched composition techniques and three-point lighting online. I sometimes ask others for advice and always experiment with new equipment. I think lighting is the most essential skill to master. (In short, put the light source above the camera, don’t use a ring light if it’s going to be reflected onscreen, and don’t backlight your subject). My obstacles involved cost. Buying new and better equipment was the biggest hurtle toward learning and improving. Read more>>
Juliette Cochet
Let’s start this straight: if you think somebody has it easy as an artist, they’re not. They’re just good at hiding the fact that they know nothing. I know that I don’t have it all figured out. I know that I’m just at the beginning of my learning process even though I have been working on Acting every single day and night for the past two years. And I’m sure that in 50 years I will have even more questions than I do now. But to answer the questions, I don’t know how I learn to do anything. I’m just observing people and when I like what they do, I’m taking inspirations. Or I’m listening to directions and trying to follow somebody’s vision. Or I’m just trying to act the worst way possible until I find something that seems interesting to me. I’m searching informations, answers to things that I don’t know. I’m watching a lot of movies, plays and TV shows. I’m writing a lot, imagining a whole new universe, and then I’m just having fun on stage. Read more>>
Nicholas Pudjarminta
My journey as a producer began as a young kid, lost in the virtual worlds of video games. I spent countless hours exploring the worlds of video game hits like Zelda, Starcraft, and Harvest Moon. They were so lifelike and immersive that I began to wonder: Could I create one of these worlds? At age 11, I made a life-changing Google search, “How do I make a video game?” I was thrown into a rabbit hole of creative exploration. I started teaching myself everything I could about game engines and programming languages. I even started making tons of small games myself! My hunger to learn quickly grew to include learning about the high-quality graphics of animated movies, as well as the storytelling and production of live-action films. This led to most of my early teenage years being spent making games, animations, and films. By the time I was 18, I had accumulated well over 100 small projects in these three fields. Read more>>
Jordy
I started learning how to edit videos in High School as a hobby! I was inspired by watching vlogs & basketball mixtapes on YouTube, and I started learning how to edit video in iMovie. I built a good foundation of learning to edit video early on by recording videos of me & my friends and editing those clips into vlogs that we can all watch back for memories. Video editing was never my full time job, but I always found myself coming back to it as a hobby, and something I found to be fun. I never actually edited sports content until I started my TikTok page in November 2023. I started making sports content tied in with music, and I never would’ve imagined it would grow into what it is today! Even until now, I am still having fun with it, creating the content I want to make, while sharing my passion for sports and music. I was able to capture an audience by using intros of athletes singing/dancing to a song, then transition into their highlights while continuing the song from the intro clip. I truly appreciate everyone who has supported me on this unexpected journey, it would not be possible without you all! Read more>>
Jonathan Moon
If I could go back in time and tell my younger self anything about learning to be a musician, it would be that nothing will ever win out just sitting down and doing the damn thing. Raw talent is what true artists cultivate and run on, and no amount of side-stepping practice or buying another piece of equipment or procrastinating will ever make up for it. Charisma and self honesty are power. I would consider myself a mostly self-taught musician. I’ve taken bits and pieces from numerous teachers in a myriad of forms over the years, stealing small facets that fascinated me. We are all curators of the world imprinted on us, imitating and assimilating and rejecting. I feel that my plethora of influences and circumvention of conventional training has granted me a unique resonance and really forced me to find my own voice. There’s nothing I relish more than originality synergized with talent. I’ve lived in my songs alone a long time, sat with them and experimented and listened to where the beating heart was. Read more>>
Skyler Paladino
I learned to do what I do primarily through hands-on experience and a lot of trial and error. When I started creating content on TikTok, I didn’t have a formal background in food or videography. I just knew I had a passion for food and wanted to share that in a way that was accessible to everyone. I watched countless tutorials on editing, filming, and recipe development. Along the way, I also absorbed tips from other creators and food bloggers who had been in the space for longer. Read more>>
Jocelyn Gardiner
I had no plans to become a professional photographer. It all started when I became a mother and wanted to capture those magical moments of my baby’s early years. I spent countless hours watching YouTube tutorials, studying textbooks on editing software, lighting, posing—pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I attended workshops and even spent afternoons poring over my Canon camera manual. It took a while before I could consistently take photos I felt were worth sharing. Read more>>
Deja Jovon
I was always a creative person. I wrote short stories and poetry before moving to Madrid, Spain in 2016 to teach English abroad. Madrid was a captivating and inspirational city full of life, love, and interconnectedness. It was here that I started teaching myself how to draw. I was not so accustomed to the slower-paced lifestyle that Spain had to offer. I was more familiar to the fast-paced, hustle and bustle of Chicago. Madrid taught me to be more present in life and to be open to new possibilities. I had plenty of free time and instead of filling it with work, I visited an art store near my flat and purchased a sketchbook and a set of graphite pencils. I spent the evenings with a glass of vino tinto, and a soothing playlist as I practiced drawing reference photos I found online. Of course, my initial drawings were cringy, but the airy and euphoric feeling I gained from it kept me going, not so much the result of the drawing. Read more>>
Matthew Robinson
I’ve learned how to do what I do (painting) on and off throughout my life. My parents would pin brown paper to the wall for me and my younger sister to paint on when we were little kids. Throughout my childhood and elementary school, I would paint and do crafts in school programs. Since 2022/2023, however, I’ve been working with a professional instructor to improve my craft. We paint still lifes and subjects in plain air, my main approach at the moment. Knowing what I know now, there are different things I could have done to speed up my learning process (for example, joined workshops or programs). But as a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the early 1990s, my parents and I unfortunately encountered many obstacles along the way. Long story short, there were frequent stops and starts with opportunities for me to develop certain skills, and countless things we had to figure out alone, especially when it came to me getting quality support and instruction. But I am grateful to be on the other side now with consistent support and instruction based on something I truly enjoy doing! Through all this, I think perseverance, patience, forgiveness, optimism, and love have been key skills. Read more>>
Aaron Brodeur
I learned a broad overview of art-making during my years in college which gave me strong foundations in sculpture, installation, painting and drawing. After college I worked in a props department for the trade show industry where I developed practical skill sets and tricks of the trade that I could further apply in my art practice. For several years I did freelance logo design, illustration and t-shirt graphics for surf/skate companies on the side. In addition to traditional approaches, experimentation with material and processes has been a big part of what I do, and working in that manner forces me to continue learning and advancing my abilities. Read more>>
Tamika V. Johnson
Since childhood, I’ve had an interest in reading and words. When I turned seven, I began to write children’s books in my spare time after learning sentence structure and more aspects of English through school studies. That same age, I entered a children’s book writing contest and placed in Top 5. Once I entered fourth grade, I decided to enter another contest for children’s book writing. I placed Top 3 this time. In sixth grade, I began to write poetry to express myself emotionally. Once I began high school, I would write movie and play scripts for my family, friends, and schoolmates to practice the art of acting. I wrote my first three books by hand and placed them in binders around the age of fifteen. People would read them, pass them along to others, and then I would get courtesy calls about who has them every few days. Read more>>
Melana Byars
Before I picked up any other skills, I was the family nuisance when it came to singing as a kid. There wasn’t a time when we wouldn’t be in the car or house and I wasn’t singing a record from top to bottom. I’m still like that to this day. All of that singing eventually led me to pick up an instrument. I started playing the violin when I was eight and continued to play throughout high school. I picked up clarinet briefly for two years when I was nine. However, the school I transferred to didn’t offer band so I stopped playing the clarinet altogether and only continued with my violin studies. I took violin lessons and played in different youth orchestras from elementary through high school. I attended an art high school where I majored in violin performance and minored in film and creative writing. During that time, I took a visual arts class, joined a women’s show choir group for two years, and took dance classes for five years. For college, I decided to study journalism and only applied to schools with broadcast journalism programs. Read more>>
Dana Kinsey
In my high school, there were no teachers who knew much about poetry or read any modern poets to share with me. I was only exposed to the few poems in the literature anthologies that meant nothing to me at the time, so I was writing in a vacuum. It wasn’t until I started reading poetry on my own that I realized the power in the genre. I wish I would have had a mentor to guide me, someone who could have shared poets that would have mattered to me as a teenager. Taking initiative and being curious have always helped me reach my goals, and now I have plenty of mentor poets; I’m also trying to be that mentor poet I desperately longed for when I needed one. Read more>>
Islam Gimazov
I started learning about filmmaking at the age of 9 when I first started my YouTube blog about travels and my life. I used the “iMovie” program on my iPad, an editing software, that gave me a very basic understanding of trimming shots and putting them together. By the way, all the “films” were shot on the same iPad I edited on and it had such a low resolution that I had to downsample some of the clips to have at least a 480p section on my YouTube. I shot my first “award-winning” short film at 12. We won a local school film festival. But shooting this film gave me an idea of what a story is and that every story needs at the very least a character and a conflict. It also gave me an idea of some fundamental cinematography rules which I learned in my college years later. At the age of 17, I thought, I shot my first “professional” short film, in my high school with my best friends. Read more>>
Randi Samuelson-brown
I LOVE this topic! So many people have come up to me and said, “I’ve written a book.” First of all, congratulations if you have done so! Apparently 81% of people SAY they want to write a book – but only 3% actually go on to do so! Next comes the hard part – how do you know if what you have written is good? Maybe you just assume that it is. Think again! You’ve put a lot of work into your creation. Go the extra mile and learn what is needed. Like any other endeavor, there is an education required. I learned about CRAFT and the business of publishing at Lighthouse Writers in Denver. UCLA has a fine extension program, and I am sure major cities across the country have similar programs. You wouldn’t try for a CPA job without an accounting degree or education, right? Read more>>
Tami Canaday
Many years of practice. My first writing group was Chameleon Stage where the playwrights brought in plays-in-progress to be read by invited actors to the group. After reading an individual piece, both the playwrights and actors would comment on the script – both what worked and what didn’t. Also, Chameleon Stage produced staged readings of plays that were ready to be presented in front of an audience. The group lasted for seventeen years; to me, it was like an extended MFA program. To have speeded up the learning of my craft? Well, it would have been to pursue a MFA in playwriting. The most essential skill to playwriting is the willingness to collaborate with other theater artists including directors, designers, stage managers, dramaturges, and the audience. The audience is an important collaborator because it’s the final arbitrator of your work. The obstacles that stood in my way of learning more? Work, family, the necessities of living. Read more>>
Estrella (star) Garza
Learning isn’t linear, like many paths in life the road ahead in a long term journey comes with lots of twists and turns. This lesson learned was one that came to me only after the multiple failed attempts in trying to “stick to the plan” after finishing cosmetology school. Starting my career and apprenticeship, I had a check list for every milestone I planned to achieve. However, I soon found out there is no one way to learn in the hair industry and no one set person who can show you everything you need to know to be successful. Learning the basics of shampooing to learning how to cut hair all have the same core principle, that is, to remain a student. You can truly learn something from everyone. In my time in my apprenticeship and while continuing to shadow my mentors, I always remained in a students mindset, I know how to do a cut my way but that doesn’t mean seeing it again won’t benefit me. Hearing the steps and guidance from several teachers on the same only helped expand my mastery of that technique. Read more>>
Drew Stephens
I’ve always had an interest in the Creativity and Arts. As a kid I really liked creative things and using my imagination. My first initial jump into creativity was Black and White photography. Black and White photography was my first love and really taught me the basics of photography and composition. Learning how to develop film, use a light meter, develop your own prints, a lot of mistakes were made and even more lessons learned. Being in Photography got me involved with the yearbook in high school , which taught me graphic design & digital photography. I enjoyed the idea of mixed media, I went into graphic design pretty heavy. After getting confident in Adobe creative suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) I went on to community college. I discovered Videography and Cinematography as a Major. I was immediately intrigued because of my love for Movies and TV. I switched my major to Media Production, transferred to Towson University ( Go Tigers) ,majored in Electronic Media & Film. After graduating I started studying people I admired, directors, creatives and just watching everything. Read more>>
Tj The Dj
Whether it’s being a business owner, a DJ, being a content creator or anything I put my mind to do, it all starts with having the passion. Also, an essential skill, when doing anything, is doing your research! We can never learn enough about the things we are passionate in. The only obstacle in your way is yourself! Read more>>
Isidro Morales Jr
I went to Bay Vista Beauty College in National City California, and later transferred to California Hair Design Academy in La Mesa California. The most essential skills that I was drawn to were the art of styling hair, skin care, make up, and hair coloring techniques. I have learned more by attending numerous hair shows this was obviously before social media. I worked with various lines such as Paul Mitchell, Jingles international, Joico, Sephora, MAC, and Crew. Read more>>
Shannan McMillan-Gibbs
I learned to do what I do by being open to self-discovery. It actually started before college. In highschool, my dad put me in a program called the Black MBA Leaders of Tomorrow program. At the time he was the President of the NJ Chapter, so I knew I had to produce! There, I competed in case competitions all over the country at their annual national conferences. They also gave the students an opportunity to win scholarships through an anonymous essay contest. Read more>>