Steal Like An Artist - Austin Kleon

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“We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do notget them from our laptops.”—John Cleese
My favorite cartoonist, Lynda Barry, has this saying: “In the digital age, don’t forget to use yourdigits!” Your hands are the original digital devices. Use them.While I love my computer, I think computers have robbed us of the feeling that we’re actuallymaking things. Instead, we’re just typing keys and clicking mouse buttons. This is why so-calledknowledge work seems so abstract. The artist Stanley Donwood, who’s made all the albumartwork for the band Radiohead, says computers are alienating because they put a sheet of glassbetween you and whatever is happening. “You never really get to touch anything that you’redoing unless you print it out,” Donwood says.Just watch someone at their computer. They’re so still, so immobile. You don’t need a scientificstudy (of which there are a few) to tell you that sitting in front of a computer all day is killingyou, and killing your work. We need to move, to feel like we’re making something with ourbodies, not just our heads.Work that only comes from the head isn’t any good. Watch a great musician play a show. Watcha great leader give a speech. You’ll see what I mean.You need to find a way to bring your body into your work. Our nerves aren’t a one-way street—our bodies can tell our brains as much as our brains tell our bodies. You know that phrase,“going through the motions”? That’s what’s so great about creative work: If we just start goingthrough the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, orstart kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking.
Page 3 and 4: Steal Like an Artist10 Things Nobod
Page 5 and 6: For Boom—whenever Boom gets here
Page 7 and 8: “Art is theft.”—Pablo Picasso
Page 10: It’s one of my theories that when
Page 14 and 15: The writer Jonathan Lethem has said
Page 16: A good example is genetics. You hav
Page 19 and 20: Marcel Duchamp said, “I don’t b
Page 22 and 23: School is one thing. Education is a
Page 26 and 27: If I’d waited to know who I was o
Page 28 and 29: They pretended to be artists. In my
Page 30 and 31: “Start copying what you love. Cop
Page 32 and 33: the people you want to be. The song
Page 34 and 35: A wonderful flaw about human beings
Page 38 and 39: The movie Jurassic Park came out on
Page 44 and 45: “I have stared long enough at the
Page 46 and 47: That’s how I try to do all my wor
Page 49 and 50: “The work you do while you procra
Page 51 and 52: Take time to be bored. One time I h
Page 54 and 55: Tomlinson suggests that if you love
Page 59 and 60: I get a lot of e-mails from young p
Page 61 and 62: Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2
Page 64 and 65: Learn to code. Figure out how to ma
Page 68 and 69: I grew up in the middle of a cornfi
Page 70 and 71: first-come, first-served, without W
Page 72: If we know we need to leave home, w
Page 76 and 77: “The only mofos in my circle are
Page 78: You’re going to see a lot of stup
Page 82 and 83: “Modern art = I could do that + Y
Page 86 and 87: “Be regular and orderly in your l
Page 88: Most people I know hate to think ab
Page 92 and 93:
Amassing a body of work or building
Page 95:
“She rescued me. I’d be playing
Page 99:
The artist Saul Steinberg said, “
Page 102 and 103:
Recommended ReadingLinda Barry, Wha
Page 104:
“Deleted Scenes”This book began
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Steal Like An Artist - Austin Kleon

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