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.

Kyle Christiansen

is simply to begin. Find an outlet and develop experience. I knew before the age of 10 that I wanted to build a life around the arts and performance. My crux throughout my youth was allowing my fear of judgement, my imposter syndrome, and my methodic uncertainty to prevent me from taking any actionable steps. Read More>>

Andrea L. Wehlann

I am still learning about my craft. I am a firm believer that to be a yoga teacher I also need to be a yoga student. I practice what I teach. I repeatedly fall in love with yoga over and over again. Yoga is much like music and love, there is no ending, and it keeps on. I learned through constant and continuous seeking. Read More>>

Victoria Miller

I started learning photography when I was just 3 years old. My parents had given me this big bulky kid’s film camera as a toy, and I loved it. I took everywhere with me. My subjects at the time were anything I found interesting – my favorite stuffed animals, my preschool friends, my little brother, and even our new house when we moved. Read More>>

Benji Pierson

WHATEVER IT TAKES. I live by this moto…process is what works for you in your environment, the key is to make that “process” adaptable to any situation you may find yourself, live show, vendor format or collector artist. I use the bare minimum to make the maximum effect. Old pens bad paint and little imagination will make some magical stuff. But practice your fundamentals always be working on line quality and perspective, illustration is the foundation of any strong art career. Read More>>

Lyla Cascata

I come from a background of performance, but I wouldn’t call myself a “professional dancer.” I have enough dance training to know the basic foundations, and that was all I needed to start. I always loved the glamorous allure of Burlesque, and wanted to learn the art of it. I was going through a transition period of my personal life, and I found a chair dance workshop with AFV Exotic Arts in Charlotte, NC. Read More>>

Luis Dominguez

When i was younger I was always watching movies both animated & live action and some of my favorite things to watch were musicals i love the songs they had in musical so much I would listen to them on the daily around 9th grade was when I was really going through some personal stuff and I didn’t know how to express it since I didn’t wanna go to anyone to talk about so I just decided to write a song about it which became my first song “God Damn Mind” Read More>>

Astrid Furstner

We are a family of woodworkers. I started the Indians of My Dreams series in pastels. My husband, Brent, is a luthier (he makes guitars) and one day asked if I’d like to learn how to make my Indians in wood. I had never thought of it and would never have even crossed my mind to venture down that road. Read More>>

Gk

As a standup comedian and digital content creator, my journey has been largely self-taught, rooted in over a decade of experience in theater writing, directing, and acting. I transitioned to standup comedy in 2019, developing material organically without formal training or templates. Read More>>

Tanner Sawitz

I think that – with ceramics – it is inherently a slower learning process than a lot of other art forms, due primarily to the fact that there is a lot of waiting involved. You have to wait for your work to dry to see if it will crack. Read More>>

Marcus Monroe

I started performing when I was around 9 years old. I got into magic which led to juggling which led to stand up comedy. So by the time I started stand up (7 years ago) I was already comfortable on stage and knew how to handle a crowd. Read More>>

Mohamad Alshamsi

Started as a kid in Syria learning Karate, then In Lebanon I began Kickboxing, then In Thailand I started Muaythai and BJJ and now as a Mixed Martial Artist. many obstacles along the way from financial to mental to emotional, many obstacle that taught me valuable lessons. Read More>>

Chris Nash

I grew up around music. My grandmother was a famous Church soloist many years ago. My parents played a bit of guitar and piano as well. My biggest musical education was growing up listening to the soft rock and Country classics constantly playing on the family radio. Grandma taught me to sing and play piano. Read More>>

Erin Graboski

I learned most of my photographic craft through teaching my self and through trail and error. I enjoy taking my camera with me and throwing myself into it and figuring out how to set up the shot on my own and expierimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Knowing what I know now, I could take more classes on it but with photography, I really do think that figuring out your own niche and style is what really makes your own work unique to your own. Read More>>

Jon Wheeler

I’m the musician who’s never had a music lesson. Unless you count the recorder at primary school. And I didn’t set out to be a musician at all. It’s always felt like it just kind of happened, but obviously there’s a lot more to training in a career in construction and then ultimately ending up as a full time musician and songwriter. Read More>>

Will Conybeare

Hᴏᴡ ᴅɪᴅ I ʟᴇᴀʀɴ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ᴡʜᴀᴛ I ᴅᴏ?

I had to suck.

The key to being great at something is sucking so bad at it and being completely oblivious to it. When you’re bad and you don’t know it, you’re more likely to take risks simply because you don’t know what’s going to come; you don’t know what you don’t know. Read More>>

Sean Ibanez

Sean: I started kit drumming as a teen, and heard taiko for the first time form a Kodo concert in 2001. I immediately wanted to learn and join a group. That didn’t happen until 2004 when I moved for graduate school and joined Dondoko Taiko of Fort Worth. From there I delved in, learning what I could about taiko from the group and from the internet. I joined a second group, Dallas Kiyari Daiko because I felt I didn’t have enough time to practice and perform. Read More>>

Heidi Howard

I learned to paint first by looking. I would walk from Sunnyside to the Metropolitan Museum and look at pastels by Edgar Degas. Most of the art I was making was in the margins of my notebooks. I was at a high school focused on math and science called Bronx Science. They had an AP art class, but the teacher was super tuned out. Read More>>

Melanie Biggs

Smalls Photography originally started as a hobby during the pandemic. That was when I began exploring the more technical side of photography. I remember a good friend of mine had napkin sketched a manual settings cheat sheet for me, which was a simple enough visual aid to spring board me past that first hurdle of camera setting intimidation. After that I was photographing anyone who would model for me and my growth accelerated quickly. Read More>>

Clay Horwitz

Theres really no shortcut to learning the craft of stand up comedy. You really have to love it and want to dive into it, because at its core, its just people talking for a long time. If thats not your thing, i imagine it could get boring pretty easily. Read More>>

Camila Battiato

I learned a great deal while studying architecture in college, developing essential skills like multitasking, mastering design software, and efficiently creating designs. Architecture is a highly technical field, but it also involves creativity in problem-solving and spatial design. Later, studying interior design allowed me to dive deeper into more specialized aspects, focusing more on creativity within interiors and understanding how architectural elements shape interior spaces. Read More>>

Justin Cutburth

Something I love about filmmaking is the various mediums I get to work with. I went to school for animation, and did an internship in Houston. Great company, and people; however, sitting in front of a computer as a new animator, and trying to tackle large scale 3D modeling projects was pretty daunting. Read More>>

Iskander Al Bassam

Most people, and I made this mistake too, tend to categorize emotions in rigid ways when they first start acting. They treat anger, sadness, or happiness as if there’s only one way to express each, and they push those emotions to exaggerated extremes. Read More>>

Tina D’elia

As a Solo Performer, Actor, Writer, Creative, I learned from being inspired and moved by other solo performers, spoken word poets, stand up comedians, and performance artists starting in the early 90’s. In my early 20’s I became transformed and driven to dive into the craft of spoken word poet to solo performer and eventually joining the SAG-AFTRA union. My coaches, teachers, peers, and artists I admired are a diversity of BIPOC, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, feminist, and artistically distinct. Read More>>

Christine Sharp

Malcolm Gladwell said that it takes roughly ten-thousand hours of practice to master a skill in a cognitively complex field—the “10,000 Hour Rule.” Plenty of people agree, and plenty of other people rage against the idea. I’m not here to jump into that debate, but rather to point out that whether you think it takes 10,000 hours, 20,000 hours, 15 hours, or whatever, it is clear that it takes time doing the thing to become better at it. Read More>>

Rose Simeus

I learned all of what I know from Google and YouTube university. I spent a year researching the art of YouTube. I watched countless videos on creating thumbnails, SEO, filling out description boxes, affiliate marketing, title making, and the basics of video editing on Abode premiere pro. Read More>>

Tanner Kerrins

So, I’ve recently been attending more acting classes, but it did not start that way. The truth is I learn more from experience, being thrown into the fire. In fact, by the time I had first taken an acting class, I was already a few years into my acting career. Read More>>

Vigo Vargas & Richard Pizarro Of Playground Social

Vigo – Trial and Error. It still feels like that. No better teacher than experience, right? Too many times we approached producing sketches or short film ideas wide-eyed and ignorant to the actual behemoth’s we were taking on, Unrealistic concepts and ideas we’d dream up with absolutely no budget for sketches. Read More>>

Rakiia Butler

My mother inspired my gardening journey over a decade ago. To be honest I wasn’t always fascinated with growing. As a young teenager at the time, being outside in the heat with the bugs wasn’t appealing. However, seeing the way my mom lit up every time she was out there tending to the plants made me give growing a second chance. Read More>>

Rajat Patel

I always knew I wanted to follow a creative path. Even in high school, I loved expressing myself through dance, music, and public speaking. Thanks to my parents’ support, I was able to explore and learn different art forms freely. Read More>>

Aaron Geringer

I took my first pottery class during my final semester of college in 2013. Unfortunately, pottery is not a widely accessible craft, so it took me quite a while to find my way back to ceramics. In the winter of 2022-2023, my favorite bowl from that class broke. Read More>>

Johnny Nicco Tapia

I started boxing alongside my brother, Johnny Lorenzo Tapia, at Team Tapia Gym in Albuquerque, NM. We trained under the guidance of our first coach, Jayla Ortiz, and my older brother, Salo Tapia, who played a crucial role in showing us the ropes. From the beginning, Read More>>

Jiri Tomanek

When I first transitioned from being a marketing manager for Cartier to becoming a tattoo artist, it felt like stepping into a completely different world. I had always been passionate about art, painting and drawing had been a part of my life since childhood. But turning that passion into a career was a leap of faith. I started with an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop, but I quickly realized that the structured environment I was used to in the corporate world didn’t apply here. Read More>>