Start Making Art Today

By Nick Lee

Anyone can be an artist. You can be an artist!
This positive and friendly guide is aimed at beginners who want to be able to use their own ideas to make art but don't know where to start. It encourages the reader to bring art making into their life, form good making habits and helps them find ways to overcome perceived obstacles and build their skills as they go. It has a great focus on the fact that anyone can make art and can begin now. It is not a ‘how to’ for a specific medium but rather an invitation to welcome art making into one’s life.
People have preconceived ideas about who can be an artist, they think it’s only someone cool living in New York, or Paris, not just an ordinary person living in a small town or a little city, but anyone can make art. You don’t have to be cool or live somewhere amazing or have lot of money. An ordinary person can make extraordinary art if they choose to welcome art into their life. The only thing that defines being an artist is being a person who makes art.
Many of us are filled with self-doubt. Am I good enough to be an artist? Will people think I’m being silly? Don’t you have to go to art school to be an artist? The information in this book will fill you with the knowledge to begin and overcome your doubts. You are good enough to start now.
People make excuses about why they can’t make art, they don’t have the time, the money, or the space, but in fact starting at the kitchen table, you only need a little bit of time, maybe ten minutes a day and very simple supplies to start. We don't need a special time and place to make art: you just need to welcome art making into your life. Open the door and say hello beautiful.
The hardest part of making art can be sitting there facing that blank piece of paper or that lump of clay wondering what to make. This book will show you how to get ready for that moment, armed full of ideas and the confidence to begin.
Do you believe that having ideas for art is difficult and that ideas are rare, like gemstones? Start Making Art Today was born out of a desire to help people understand how easy it is to have ideas to make art, to see that ideas are everywhere, you just have to notice them, little glimmers of gold in the sand. Ideas for artworks start out really tiny and you build upon them to make art that reflects you and your unique way of seeing the world.
Many art books tell you what to make and how to make it. The ideas suggested in many of these books are kind of cute, but they don't have any depth to them. The ideas are unconnected to who you really are as an artist. This book will help you to learn how to develop your own ideas, how to add depth and more meaning, and help you figure out what you are trying to say with your art making.
You don't need to have mad art making skills or be good at drawing before you begin, you are art ready now and will gather skills and techniques as you make. Don't put off your journey as an artist while you wait for that perfect time. That time is now.
Art making should be fun but often when we learn techniques the focus is on ‘getting it right’, and not about enjoying the time and the process. We try to make work that someone else approves of, or says yes this is correct, whether its painting, drawing or even just enjoying crafts like knitting or sewing. The focus is upon what bits we need to ‘fix’, what bits aren’t conforming to what the world thinks art or craft should look like.
This does art a great disservice.
Art making is a beautiful open-ended question with no one correct answer. Its about exploration and adventure. Sometimes things will go wrong but that’s ok, its all part of the journey.
You are part of something bigger when you become an artist. Someone who creates becomes part of an unseen but real community.
I’m going to show you in this book that making art is about bringing joy and satisfaction, connection and meaning into your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Lee
• Release date: Feb 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645697100

Book preview

This book is for anyone who wants to be an artist. Most of us don’t get the chance to make art everyday but that doesn’t mean we aren’t an artist every day.

So how do we bring creativity and making art into our everyday lives? How do we become an artist? How do we come up with ideas? How do we form fun habits that make it easy for us to start and finish projects?

You can create a world that comes from within you, an object or image that hasn’t existed anywhere else, except in your mind. You can make your ideas real and capture something. Maybe it will be beautiful, maybe it will be awe inspiring or disturbing, maybe it will be a humble handmade creation. It’s up to you.

You will need to bring your heart.

Does this sound like you?

Do you hear a call to be creative? Just a whisper in your ear telling you it’s time to be the real you.

Do you have a longing to express yourself, to go deeper? To talk about more than just money or appearances?

Do you want to draw more meaning from the life happening around you?

Do you know that you could create your own original art if you were brave enough to pick up a blank book instead of a colouring book?

Do you want to go beyond the prescriptive art classes of your youth? To learn to explore your creativity and to express a voice that is yours alone?

Do you need to know that you are allowed to make art? That you can keep that art to yourself for as long as you want. That you don’t need to impress anyone; not even yourself. That you are not alone, having the kind of thoughts you have. Thoughts full of light and dark, ideas and imaginings? That you can be an artist.

Introduction

I have talked with so many people about their urge to make art and be creative. I’ve had conversations in airport queues, at exhibitions, in shops, the schoolyard, in my workplace and at parties. These conversations have shown me that this book is going to be useful, because people have trouble connecting with their own ideas, and end up feeling uncreative. They worry that their ideas won’t be good enough or interesting or they want to make art, but they don’t know how to begin.

People feel they can’t give themselves permission to make art, that it’s too frivolous or that the role of ‘the creative one’ is taken by someone else in their life, so they’ve buried those urges to create. People of all ages, mostly women, have told me they would love to make art, but they aren’t creative, that they don’t know what to make.

People think that ideas are hard to come by. That good ideas are rare as hens’ teeth. They go to a gallery and see a great artwork, and they think ‘wow I could never make something like that! How did they even think of it?’ They read about an artwork in a catalogue and think, ‘That’s such an amazing idea, so complicated! I couldn’t do that. I’ll never be a good artist.’

I’m going to let you in on a secret.

Ideas are everywhere, you just have to let yourself hear them, let yourself notice them. In this book we teach you how to notice your own ideas, how to generate more ideas and how to add layers of meaning and depth to your idea. During this process you will start to develop your singular voice as an artist.

But the blank page can be scary.

An artist friend said to me ‘it is the role of the artist to face the blank canvas and make something of it’, but that can be easier said than done.

My job is to make that process easier.

I will show you how to bring art making into your life, one tiny step at a time and that sometimes these tiny steps towards change can bring an avalanche of creativity and fun into your every day.

So here we have it; a book that will challenge what you thought you knew about artists, a book you can work through at your pace, a book that will help your creativity expand and fill your life.

This book tackles those barriers that people think they have, to making art.

We feel we don’t have good enough ideas, or new enough. Sometimes we can’t think of anything to make at all. We’ve spent years squashing down our creativity and now we expect it to lurch into life without warning or warming up.

Sometimes we have ideas, but we think, am I good enough? Or will I just make embarrassing crap?

Others will ask themselves if they even have the right to call themself an artist. ‘I’m just a mum doing a few doodles right? I’m not good enough to be an artist.’

You think you don’t have any ideas. I will show you that you do.

You think you aren’t creative, but I will help you to release, rekindle and grow your creativity until you are bursting at the seams with ideas.

You are worried that you will make something awful, or you will feel silly. I will show you that making mistakes and learning from them is what artists do. I will teach you to feel good about your successes and how to roll with feeling imperfect.

You want to start but are having trouble, I will show you how to bring art into your life one tiny step at a time.

You can be an artist. You are already having ideas. You will learn skills as you make. Improving all the time. You will learn that you are good enough as you are right now to start.

In this book I will also address the dark moments: Dealing with procrastination. Getting past perfectionism. Overcoming fear. How to ignore critics.

I don’t assume everyone has wild amounts of money to spend on their art making and I don’t assume you have endless time and resources.

Throughout this book I will also give you tips, tasks, exercises, and the occasional ritual to help you overcome problems you may be having in beginning your art making. We will break some art making myths and think about who artists really are.

My story.

Writing a book about making art doesn’t mean I think I have arrived somewhere, or I am a great artist. Nowhere near it. For me, the writing of this book is about getting more people to join me, dispelling myths about what it means to be an artist and what it is that we, and soon you too, actually do.

I am an artist.

I own that title now. But it hasn’t always been easy. My journey as an artist has taken many twists and turns. I went to art school at the ripe old age of seventeen and one week. Between that time and now I have been down many enticing paths, leading me in the wrong direction, away from where and what I wanted to be. Unsupportive relationships, jobs I’ve hated, spending time with groups of people whose values didn’t align with mine. I’ve wasted plenty of time trying to become passionate about activities that would make me money.

Art school opened me up to the wild ways of the world, introduced me to a world that I loved. Art school was full of wonderful people, each one an individual. Mothers, fathers, queer folk, feminists, young people avoiding something sensible, accountants grabbing a second chance to fulfil their dreams. All types of people, some of them conservative and some of them wild but all of them artists. Four years full of making art every day of the week.

I felt good about myself at art school, successful in what I was doing, and that I was in the right place. The way we were taught to think at art school, being creative, exploring ideas, really suited me, because although I’d come from a background that seemed pretty straight it was actually a little bit odd, just a tiny bit lord of the flies. I was extremely non-conformist although I may have appeared on the surface, to be quite straight. I had little understanding of teamwork because I had spent my childhood hiding in my imagination, so working by myself, making art, having my own ideas made me really happy.

But after I left art school I didn’t believe that I could actually be ‘just an artist’.

I had spent my entire university degree being asked by people ‘what I was really going to do’. My family found the things I would do at art school a bit pointless, and some of my projects laughable. Most people thought art was a waste of time. People spoke about it as a silly hobby.

I loved it though.

Unfortunately, I didn’t put my heart into making art when I left art school as I was trying to conform to other people’s objectives. I squeezed myself into the world of design; art’s much more sensible little sister. I finally realised many years on that the only thing I really wanted to be was an artist, that was my passion. I committed then to becoming an artist. I told people this truth, started writing about art, and most importantly, making and making art as often as I could.

I still work part time doing other things, but I hope that one day, I will be able to make art full time. I do not put off making art because I am not able to make art full time. I know I am always an artist and that’s what is important. I am a mother even when my child is not with me. I am an artist even when I am at my part time job.

Many people will say to you, that if you are not full time, you are not a real artist. This is poppycock. Absolute bollocks. If you make art, you are an artist.

Since I made that commitment to art I’ve sold lots of pieces, had work in many exhibitions but I’m not well known. This is the case for most artists. We will make thousands of pieces in our time, but we will still be unknown, and that is ok. We are still artists and good ones at that.

In Australia which does not have a particularly art loving culture, it’s pretty hard to make a full time career with art. I do know a few who manage it, but most successful Australian artists also have other jobs such as teaching or design. I taught visual communications at a Sydney university and I shared a hallway with several very well known artists who also taught. It was then I realised there was no shame in it. That was the norm. There are many factors that go into becoming financially successful from making art alone. Talent for sure, luck, timing, persistence, who you know. It’s a bit like saying I am going to be a movie star. You can work at it all you like but it still may not come together.

When I was teaching art, I realised that I was very good at having ideas, and that I knew how to help other people with ideas too. I was good at separating the having ideas part from the practical skills you might want to learn part. I was also good at getting out into the studio, and just start making, rather than getting waylaid by the daemon procrastination. I knew the kinds of excuses people made to themselves about why they couldn’t make art; if you have an excuse, I will give you a solution.

I also realised that unlike many artists I was happy to talk about what was really going on in my head when I make art, when I have ideas. Sometimes getting information out of artists is like pulling teeth.

A heartfelt warning from your author: Not everything I say is true.

This is art making, not brain surgery. If artists only said what was already true, nothing new would ever get made. This is about joy and expression, creativity, and fun, it’s not about a bunch of rules.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this book, and it helps you to start and keep making art.

Do please look up the artists on your phone or computer as I mention them throughout the book, it will really help you to understand the story of their art making.

Let’s take a quiz!

We all have preconceived ideas about making art: that there is a best time and place, the perfect set of skills and that we need the fanciest art materials before we even begin. We put these notions ahead of our desire to make art without even realising it.

What are your own beliefs about being an artist?

Q1. What do you need to be an artist?

Mad skills

An art degree

An urge to make something

Q2. Where is the best place to make art?

A glamorous studio with amazing natural light

A perfectly quiet space with no interruptions

Anywhere

Q3. Who can be an artist?

Only cool people

Only rich people

Anyone

Q4. Art equipment should be:

Very expensive

Only bought at art supplies stores

Anything you can lay your hands on

Q5. Art is:

Oil painting

Sculpture

Anything you want to make

Q6. The best time to make art is

When I have finished all my other chores

When the house is perfectly quiet

Now

Q8. Before I can call myself an artist I have to:

Have sold some of my work

Make art full time

Make some art

Q9. Before I can make art I need:

To be able to draw realistically

To do some expensive classes

Nothing. I can start today.

Once you’ve read this book you will know the correct answer to all the questions in this quiz is C. Yep.

You can make art any chance you get, with fancy or basic supplies, pretty much anywhere.

1

Anyone can be an artist

We all have an image of what an artist is.

Maybe it’s a cool young guy in New York. A bohemian woman in hippy clothes. A crazed person starving for their work.

Nope. None of these descriptions define what an artist is. An artist is someone who makes art. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyone can be an artist.

Perhaps you think an artist always lives in a stylish place like Paris, or Berlin? Nope that’s not the case. An artist can live anywhere: in the country, the suburbs, in a big city or in a tree house in the forest.

You don’t have to be young, cool or attractive to make art. You can be female, male, intersex, non-binary, young, old, and any nationality. You can be a person of colour, a person with or without religion. Married, single, divorced or widowed. You can make art if you have a disability, are really smart or not clever at all. Gay, straight, bi or asexual. Or just past caring about sex altogether.

An old Japanese lady might make art slowly, stitching her objects piece by piece. A small boy in Pakistan might make art, drawing beautiful patterns, using only paper and a blue pen. A transgender artist in Melbourne might make art by creating stories about themselves and their life using film.

A Chilean housewife could make art, going to a painting class once a week. An older woman in an outback country town could make art, sculpting with found objects. A young person could make art carrying on a tradition of their people or branch out entirely on their own.

If you don’t identify with anyone listed above, please know that you, yes you, can make art too, whoever you are and wherever you live.

It’s not about whether you are trained, or whether you have sold any art. Or even about whether it’s any good. It’s not where you are from, or who you are to others that makes you an artist: it’s how you think. All the parts that go together to make you unique, can also make your art unique, if you let them, and when you make art, you are an artist. It’s as simple as that.

You might be a little hesitant to claim the title ‘artist’, thinking it’s a big deal. Maybe you already do a bit of painting with a kit? Or you like to colour in colouring in books. Perhaps you embroider using premade patterns? I’m not really an artist you think to yourself. But what if you just took a tiny, tiny sidestep toward something a little deeper. You allowed yourself to expand. To fill your own world. You let yourself acknowledge some of those weird ideas you’ve been having. If you let yourself, you can be an artist too.

Art can heartbreaking, awe inspiring, mouth droppingly impressive, delicate, funny and heart stoppingly satisfying. Art can make you laugh out loud or weep and it can also be annoying, confusing and frustrating. Let yourself take a trip on the wild side.

Is there such thing as the perfect artist?

I met a lady in a long airport queue, and we started talking about art. She was saying how much she would love to make some art, but she’s not creative and that she really admires people like me that use our creativity. Well by the time we got to the check in counter, I practically had her lying on the therapist’s couch, and was happily revealing to her that she already is creative, she just has to let herself see it. Her very interest proves it, and skills or no skills [yet] she has as much right as anyone else to start making. She gave me a hug as we parted ways to take our flights.

Do you think an artist is only someone who can draw something that looks as real as a photograph, or paint a realistic scene, or sculpt a real human, like Michelangelo’s David?

If you were writing a list of traits that makes an artist, what would you put on the list? Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away I might have written a list like this:

An ability to represent an object realistically in drawing or painting or stone.

Have amazing ideas that impress other people

A great understanding of a medium and techniques

Be really cool, so everyone likes you, and the galleries think you are hot stuff

Endless time to commit to your artmaking otherwise you’ll never get anywhere right?

Great artists all embody these traits. Don’t they?

I don’t know about you but there are plenty of artists out there whose work I love, who don’t have good drawing skills, or who are colour blind, or who work more with ideas than any specific technique or medium. And ideas, well as you are going to learn, can start real tiny, right? There are fantastic artists who embroider, or who make wobbly clay masterpieces or thousands of tiny fabric mushrooms or who draw funny cartoons.

In the last few years, I have completely changed my view on what makes an artist. If I had to name some traits that I thought were important to art making I would say:

Enjoyment of making

A willingness to spend time making

A desire to be creative

That’s it. I know right! I didn’t even say being good at anything!

I think you can make art and be an effective artist with just these three traits. It’s even possible that the only trait you need is a desire to create.

So don’t worry about anything else, just get out there and make some art.

What makes someone an artist is how they think and what they notice.

Confidence, like art, never comes from knowing all the answers: it comes from being open to all the questions.

Earl Gray Stevens, 1879-1955, poet and insurance executive.

Artists have a unique vison: they see into the future, something that could exist if they were to bring it to life.

Artists don’t think like other people. They allow themselves to think beyond the usual. They have ideas based on the things they have noticed and they choose to bring these ideas to life, to embody them with matter.

Experienced artists notice things that other people walk right past. When they sit down to look at an object, they might see both the object as a whole and the parts that make it up. The outline, the colour, the weight, the personality, the way it sits in its environment. The way that object is being lit by the sun this very moment.

They may not even be thinking about objects, but about what our world does, or what we humans do, or the way we relate to each other, or to parts of our material world. They ask questions of the things they notice.

Ideas, the energy for artists, are everywhere. Ideas exist in every object, interaction, and moment of our lives. Anything can be inspiration for an artist.

It is true that many artists are inspired by very particular things, maybe it’s the landscape of Indonesia with the volcanoes shrouded in cloud, the folds of flesh on a human body, or the texture of flaky paint on a wall. Or something more esoteric, or intellectual. Some artists may be drawn to the same moments, the same occurrences, the same objects over and over. Only moving very slowly through an idea and re-addressing it many times and in many mediums, finding that their ideas are expanding even as they work through them.

Artists notice things. They notice what others do not see. An artist would take a photo of that dead bird lying on the street because it’s sad and beautiful and awful at the same time. It’s a paradox. An artist would notice that the shadow of the Chihuahua walking along next to her, looks like a wolf. An artist would go camping and collect a thousand leaves and stare at their colours. She would take them home for reference, where they would sit on a shelf for two years until she needs them for that idea.

Art making is about bringing joy into your own life.

When we start making art, we learn techniques and try out lots of materials but unfortunately very often the focus is on ‘getting it right’, and not about enjoying the time and the process. We are always trying to make something that someone else approves of, or gives us a good mark for, or says yes this is correct, whether its painting, drawing or even just enjoying crafts like knitting or sewing. The focus is upon what bits we need to ‘fix’, what bits aren’t conforming to what the world thinks this art or craft should look like.

This does art a great disservice.

Art making is a beautiful open ended question with no one correct answer.

I’m going to show you in this book that making art is about bringing joy and satisfaction, connection and meaning into your life.

Do however remember: You are in the artist’s world now and it’s as lawless as the wild west.

We will mostly do whatever we want but I will tell you to do things that I think are worth doing. If you think they are not right for you, I ask you to consider them anyway. Why? Because I know the excuses people make, I have made them myself. I know that you don’t feel you can be creative, but I know you can.

The path to becoming an artist is littered with the bodies of those who failed to put themselves first, or at least higher up the list, and those bodies are still breathing. They are the half alive bodies of those still slogging their way up the path to normal. To what they think others expect of them.

Some people see life as a tiring struggle, some people see life as an energising party.

I am going to help you to see life as an opportunity to explore and find something out that you didn’t know before. A chance to express your inner self in a satisfying way. A way to create meaning, joy, and satisfaction.

Sometimes I might sound like I am contradicting myself, but please consider both views. Art is full of shafts of light that reveal different colours.

2

I want to make art but…

People make a lot of excuses about why they can’t bring art into their life.

I talk to people about making art all the time: sometimes these are happy conversations about what someone is currently making, or an exhibition they are having, or a new skill they are learning but just as often, they are telling me all the reason’s they can’t make art.

I don’t have time to make art.

I don’t have any talent.

I don’t know what to make.

I don’t have anywhere to make art.

I can’t afford art materials.

I don’t know how to draw.

I don’t have any skills.

I am not creative.

I don’t think people will like my art.

I want to make art but that’s not ‘me’.

All these excuses for not making art can be overcome and I will show you how in this book, but for the moment let’s look at a couple of the major excuses people use.

I don’t have time to make art.

There are people who really don’t have a lot of time to make art.

People who care for an ill family member, or who have a brand new baby, or those who study and work two jobs. Someone who runs