Introduction
Arting is a mysterious thing — where does it come from? How is it inspired? How does it improve? What is “improvement”? Where does this ability come from? Such an enigma! A beautiful one at that, too. And sometimes leaving things as a mystery is the correct answer and in many ways, that’s the case here. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as it were.
But there is one aspect that does beg questions, that being the question of talent vs skill, that age-old debate. Now talent is different than skill — talent is innate and born-in whereas skills are learned and earned. But the thing is, you can only ride on talent for so long. Over time, that dependency will fail as its magic only goes so far. At some point, skill will have to take up the reins to continue the journey, to provide better wheels on that cart. But put them together and you generally have what we would consider someone who is “great” at what they do, and not only “great,” but...here's the important bit...continuing-to-improve great. But why do they continue to improve? Well, it’s not typically because of their growing talent, but because their skills continue to improve the work. Or in other words, their improving skills give their talent bigger and bolder wings. And that's the key part to remember.
But it sure can be discouraging to see someone with talent bang out works with so little effort, isn’t it? Indeed, it can even make it seem like arting is just beyond our own grasp to take up, ever beyond our own abilities. We've all heard it...the "I'd love to paint, but I'm not artistic" lament. But nothing is farther from the truth! As Bob Ross so astutely observed, "Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do." So let’s talk about this dichotomy between talent and skills so that we can get a better handle on our own efforts, motivations, and directions. Perhaps we can find new motivation in this, and even better, possibly dampen that intimidation factor so many seem to have when it comes to making art.
It's The Guts That Count
We’ve all been witness to it, we’ve all watched that one person who just makes arting look uncannily simple and effortless as they worked. They just seem to bang out perfection with blithe ease right before our eyes, first go. It’s like magic! And yes…there are actually plenty of artists like this, who are absurdly talented right out of the gate, seemingly born with an innate almost alien ability the rest of us lack. Some people just seem born predisposed with a gift for arting and they just don’t seem to work as hard as the rest of us to crank out a great result. All this is true.
But it’s also true that often better results come with practice all the same. Because it’s also true that arting isn’t better with an innate talent nor is having a born-in talent going to make you a superior artist. Hey, it’s said that Michelangelo quipped at eighty years old, “At last my apprenticeship is finished, I am ready to begin.” Indeed, just because you’re born with a gift doesn’t make you better than any other artist…it just means you got a head start. But we all know how head starts go with races, don’t we? They can peter out a lot faster than you think. Because it’s the ones with heart, with guts, who really work at it with training, diligence, and dedication who go the extra mile with earnest effort and gumption, who usually end up being the long-run winners. Because — hey — I’ve see plenty a gifted artist simply give up or burn out once things ceased to be easy for them. They go nowhere in the long run. It’s like they simply don’t have the guts to back up their gift, guts others developed because they had to work for their skills. Because here’s the thing: When something comes too easy, it’s also very easy to give up when the going gets tough. The truth is, it’s the guts to go on that counts. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” And when we’ve worked hard for what we developed, we learn important life lessons along the way that help not only our art journey, but our own personal journey towards the light, something that rarely comes to those who are too easily doing what they do because they didn’t have to make the sacrifices, log the long hours, dive deep into rabbit holes, and make all the mistakes and wrong turns. There’s a lot of cosmic gifts to be found in righting your little boat in a storm, gifts that won’t come any other way, gifts that help us on our art journey in ways only they can.
Be The Tortoise, Not The Hare
Because we’ve all been witness to this, too: Watching an artist develop over time from a complete newb into a highly sophisticated magician with all the work and practice they’ve put into their efforts, diligent over the years. Sometimes those leaps come quickly and sometimes slowly in incremental steps, but one way or ‘nuther, they come, and we see that artist bloom right before our eyes. Such a wonderful thing!
But what they’ve done is not increase their talent, what they’ve done is to improve their skills and vision, or rather they’ve improved their “brain training.” You see, arting can be learned from scratch, it can be trained, and it can be vastly improved through practice. Yes! Yes, it can. Every artist who has determinedly worked on their craft is proof of this universal fact. The truth is then, all arting is equal parts love, curiosity, creativity, mystery, practice, and neuroplasticity. Note how talent isn’t even in that equation? Nor should it be — it’s not a constant and, ultimately, it’s not necessary! Nope. Remember, talent only goes so far, but it’s your skills and vision that are infinite! So don’t be the hare that rides on talent for the short-term to pull up short over time. Instead, be the tortoise who steadily plods along, working on your skills patiently and diligently to come to the long run finish line first and with a more meaningful win. The earnest work you put into your arting will always have a big payoff!
The Arting Ingredients
As mentioned, creating art is equal parts love, curiosity, creativity, mystery, practice, and neuroplasticity. Understanding how these work can really help us fathom not only our own process more completely, but maybe also illuminate our own drives better to motivate us even more on our creative journey. So let's talk about them...
Art is love, love is art. The two are one and the same. All true artists love what they do, love what they’re creating, and love the whole process of making art, even the maddening parts, even the tedious parts and even the grind of making art. Quite literally, they’re driven to create art by a love that’s primordial and mysterious, a passion that comes from deep within their soul that’s as natural and necessary as breathing. For many, it’s even a compulsion that can override most everything else in their lives. In all these cases, this love sustains the process and pulls the artist forwards through the completion of each new piece, even when everything else fails. For these reasons then, the greatest of all these ingredients is love. No true art can be created in the absence of love, in some form, on some level.
In partnership with this love is curiosity, the seeking of discovery, of expansion of creative horizons and potential. Every true artist is an explorer on some level, a pioneer of their own creative landscape. If we're pushing our curiosity with our work then, we're going to push towards our unknown potential not only in our skills but also in our scope, busting open artistic doors that we didn't even know where closed in the first place. Curiosity is what compels us forwards with pricked ears and eager hearts, buoyant, even intoxicated by a sense of revelation and enlightenment promised to us if only we reach for it. To be a pathfinder is a true hallmark of a curious mind and mix that with creativity, and that potent concoction would fuel and satiate any artistic endeavor!
Creativity comes in many forms as we see in cooking, gardening, fashion design, problem-solving, theoretical physics, innovative architecture, car design, conjuring up mathematical equations, and on and on. Of course then, with creativity often comes art, they just tend to go hand in hand. Indeed, the more creative you are, the more amplified your art. In other words, creative thinking simply results in creative doings so the more creative your thinking, the more creative your doings. But what is “creativity”? That's a pretty big question with an even bigger answer. For our purposes though we can think of it as that willingness to stretch your own boundaries in terms of skills, concepts, narrative, and materials paired with your ability to manifest all this in new novel ways that push your portfolio forwards. It’s simply your propensity for thinking outside the box, especially your own. How eager are you to blow past convention? How willing are you to blow apart what’s safe, accepted, and expected? And how married are you to your own comfort zones and habits? How far can you push your art forwards and in what directions? How far down that rabbit hole are you willing to go? That sort of thing.
Like it or not, know it or not, creating art has a mystery component to it. That Muse thing and all. The nature of inspiration, the drives that lead us on, the fingerprint of our aesthetic, and the powers that compel us to do it all over again and again and again despite all the hardships cannot be explained, they can only be experienced. So let’s not dwell here — a mystery should remain a mystery. Suffice to say, embrace the unknown for it's the reason why we go down certain paths to create the way we do.
All great art is predicated on practice. Yes, even Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had to apprentice if just to learn the ropes. Stubbs even had to dissect horses to practice anatomy before so expertly painting them. So learn the basics, grasp the ropes, then work to perfect them through practice practice practice. And practice takes hard work and time — a lot of it. Just be aware that everyone learns at their own pace and in different ways, so don’t become discouraged if you’re not progressing as quickly as you hoped or through the same conduits as others. Everyone is different! Be patient with yourself; give yourself grace. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the process and continue to feed your curiosity and eagerness for discovery. Remove the pressure to dampen the anxiety. Indeed, studies show that the best learning happens in the absence of pressure, not with the application of it! And perfection is overrated! Art should first and foremost be fun and meaningful so if it’s not, you’re doing it wrong. Step back, rethink, recalibrate, and re-engage with a new approach or attitude.
And lastly we have neuroplasticity, the adaptive abilities of the brain to learn new things and to sustain that learning. You see, the brain is an adaptive system that will create and strengthen neural pathways based on use. And so neuroplasticity is the brain’s penchant to restructure itself to adapt to new challenges and uses. Quite literally then, the more you art, the more your brain adapts to making art. How cool is that? And all these pathways can be trained with consistent practice that strengthens and refines them, even generates more pathways to accommodate. So as these neural pathways develop, your “innate ability” will seem ever more effortless because your brain has learned how to do things through learning through repetition. So honestly, “I’m not good at art” isn’t so much about talent as it is about the time and practice you’ve dedicated to arting. It’s about the work, not about the talent.
Put all this together then and therein lies tremendous hope, doesn't it? Because all of these ingredients are within anyone’s grasp! Yes! Anyone and everyone can art! And art well! Indeed, every child is born an artist, aren’t they? It’s society and life that pummel it out of people, but you can regain what was lost! And you can develop it into something you find wholly satisfying and something to be very proud of. You can achieve your dreams with your art given you have the guts to reach for it and given you invest the time and effort to achieve it. And this isn’t mercurial luck or exclusive privilege giving you a leg up. This is real, actual, tangible work everyone can do: If you have the love for it and are willing to practice practice practice, you too can create appealing art!
The Practicalities
It’s one thing to talk about arting and wholly another to actually do it, isn’t it? But after all these decades of being a working artist in our field, I can speak to three things that seem to hold true for all learning in art.
First, you’re going make a lot of “bad” art before you get good at it. Everyone is terrible at what they’re a newb at—that’s okay! And “bad” and “good” are such subjective things when it comes to art, aren’t they? Like while many would consider black velvet paintings to be “bad” art, the truth is they require tremendous vision and skill to pull off well. You really have to know what you're doing to successfully create that kind of work. There's this, too: While you might not like what you're creating, chances are there's someone out there who'll love it. There's a piece of art for everyone! Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, and it's not always true that the beholder is the artist themselves. And no worries, this is a normal and strange phenomenon with arting. Indeed, Martha Graham talks about the "divine dissatisfaction" when it comes to artists and their art, and she's absolutely spot on. Point being, while you may not like the piece you created so much, chances are someone else will! Really, while we may see all the "errors" and parts we don't like in our pieces, someone else simply won't see them, they won't even know they're "errors." They'll only see a piece they love and if you've made that connection with someone, hey...that's a win! On that note, it's a strange twist of Fate that those pieces you think will fail most will be the very ones most embraced by the public while those you think will succeed the best will meet with the most crickets. I'm not kidding...it's crazy! But the point is, getting good at something entails a lot of failures and missteps along the way because that’s simply how the brain learns. So quite literally, the more you can pick up on your mistakes to correct them, the faster you’re going to learn. So never be afraid to make a mistake! It’s the mistake that’s exactly your learning pathway. So don’t be so hung up on perfection. Sure, we need some standard to aim for to improve — that’s good. But perfection can be a paralyzing pressure pot — that’s bad. So keep perfection in its place…at the higher echelons of achievement where one’s skills can be more demanding of themselves. But when you’re just starting out, be more concerned with things like learning the methods and materials, understanding composition and design, exploring narrative and themes, learning color theory, things like that. Perfection will come in its own time, so give yourself room to grow and evolve in the interim. And above all—have fun!
Second, you’re going to make a lot of good art to make your intermittent great, transcendental pieces. Not everything you create will be stellar or ground-breaking, and that’s okay! That’s typical of every artist’s body of work. And every artist has bad art days where nothing works right or a “bad” piece gets created — it happens. That’s art life. We’re human after all. “I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one,” said Taylor Swift, and she speaks for every artist, really. And in my GOAT movie, Ratatouille, Chef Gusteau shares that not every dish he created worked, but he had to try that new idea anyway! Truly, if you aren't stretching and exploring, if you aren't willing to take a risk and make a mistake, you aren't growing. So again, remove that pressure on yourself to always be incredible in your art. That kind of expectation isn’t only unfair, it’s unrealistic and unreasonable, and in the long run, it's counterproductive to your growth. Honestly, our lofty expectations of ourselves can be crippling. Instead then, just have fun with arting! Focus on exploring your art love and creative inspirations whole-heartedly, and let the rest simply fall into place where it may. The Muse is a funny thing — it comes and goes and it’s not our place to make sense of it. Just enjoy things as you create them and the rest will sort itself out.
And lastly, learning is never-ending. It’s an infinite road with infinite detours. There’s always something new to learn, something fresh to discover, something novel to explore — always. Even in our hyper-focused art form of equine realism, there’s always some new trick to play. That also means that no one — absolutely no one — is good enough to stop being a learner. You’re never too advanced to think you can stop there. Nope. Stay curious and creatively adventurous. Evolution is a tricky thing, too — it can go in spurts or gradually, but how ever it happens, it’s always grinding away right under our noses. And here’s the thing: Our art often evolves along pathways of improvement, but it does that best when we remain open to continued learning to rev up and inform it. Really, it’s those artists who remain learners who tend to advance the fastest and in a much more sustained way with the least artistic plateaus, stylistic homogenization, or entrenched formula becoming creative crutches. In short, remaining an active learner maximizes your creative freedom to pivot in any direction you wish, and with that comes rapid evolution and advancement.
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? Get to it! You may barely be able to draw a stick figure now, but put in the work and sooner than you think, you’ll be well on your way! The Nature bit is great and all, but honestly, it’s a dime a dozen. It’s in Nurture where the magic happens! Like you come to learn so much about life and yourself in the Nurture camp, and having earned your Nurture through all the hard work, you’ve gained learning systems that will take you far into the future on an infinite path to improvement. There’s always something new to learn, always room to grow and evolve, and always a new inspiration or idea to be expressed! So it’s not really a question of talent or skill, is it? It’s a question of how much are you willing to dedicate yourself to your art. Happily for us then, that’s a question with a wide open answer! Go chase it!
“The more you practice, the better you get, the more freedom you have to create.”
— Jocko Willink
