Steal Like an Artist

Steal Like an Artist, although it's a relatively short book, packs a lot of information and insight into it. The chapters are divided into smaller sections–almost like bullet points–to keep things succinct and to the point, and because of that, the book felt like a fun and lighthearted read. To condense the long list of ideas contained within it into one simple sentence: Steal like an artist is a book on how to keep creating things, whether those things be art, books, or even a business, and improving your skills in that. Kleon starts with telling us that we should all “steal like artists,” as the title suggests, so that we may move from imitation to emulation–like a painter copying the greats. He then goes on to provide more personal insight, like how we should be creating the things we want to see or how side projects are one of the most important things to have.

While I was already doing a lot of what the book suggests in terms of taking from the artists and the world around me, it gave me new ideas of things I could take note of and just how to go about that. For example, there's one section of the book where he talks about several musicians and artists that always kept spare paper and pens on them so that they could be sure to write down or sketch everything of importance–which really means anything that sparks some kind of inspiration. In another part, which I mentioned before, Kleon says to write what you want to read, which was essentially the mentality I had with my personal writing projects already. As a writing tutor, however, using some of the ideas he shares can be a bit tricky because the very nature of them requires creative writing, but there is one idea in particular that really stuck out as helpful: good writing comes from being hands on. Kleon notes that in his college courses, where everything was in a 12 point Times New Roman font, his writing was awful, but once he started including analog tools in the process, it felt better and more fun. This, I think, applies well to tutoring. It can be tricky to get an idea to stick with a student when they can't really get their hands on it.

The book itself feels a lot like a set of notes, with doodles scribbled in the margins and messy ideas that all connect to each other in some way or another, on how to be a creative, and that's something I really like about it, though I recognize that's definitely not for everyone. I also appreciate how personal a lot of this is. Often when reading things by successful people on how to be successful, they stand on this strange, disconnected high horse, like they're silently telling you that success is some kind of pipe dream, except for people like them. Austin Kleon, on the other hand, goes out of his way to tell stories of his own failures and explain that even though he has become a successful creative–so long as your standard for success there is the ability to create–he, too, has been in the shoes of the reader. He goes so far as to say that he is sharing things he still uses or thinks about to this day, so rather than getting the usual “I used to do this before I achieved success” talk, it feels like we're getting a much more honest view of creativity.

I think if I were to recommend this book to anyone, it'd have to be someone who thinks roughly the same way I do due to the format of the book. I enjoy how messy and short the ideas are; they keep my attention. I also think that there's a particular mentality behind this book that's only really useful to people who find writing or art to be a necessary creative outlet. For me, personally, I know that I would never be able to go without the ability to write, or even just come up with new ideas, and I think that's the mentality that the author has, too. In short, I would be hesitant to recommend this book to people only because the likelihood of them liking it to the same extent that I do is limited by how much the way they think of art and creativity aligns with the author.