If you haven’t already, I reccomend reading Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. It is a book that was written with the purpose of teaching people how to come up with creative ideas. The book is very informative, eye-opening, and quite charming. I believe everyone should read this book, even if they believe they don’t have a creative bone in their body.

I stumbled across this book about two years ago while browsing through my high school art teacher’s various titles or art book in the class’s small library. The small, five shelf library was filled to the brim books related to the visual arts. There were art publications, art history books, books on how to create art, books about art colleges– I mean, you name, it was in there.  Or at least  it felt that way.

I saw this tiny, black square of a book sandwiched between two colossal art history books on Salvador Dali. I plucked the black square of a book out of the shelf and was faced with its title that read “Steal Like an Artist.” Stealing? Isn’t steal frowned upon in the art community? I was intrigued. I finished the book the day I signed it out of the library, and was not disappointed.

To make a long story short, I was so enamored with the book after I read it that I wanted to purchase my own copy to keep for myself so I could refer back to all the advice the Austin Kleon gave me. However, I was pretty broke,  so I decided to settle for copying the part of the book that I though encapsulated all of Kleon’s advice into my journal for future reference.

If you guys are as broke as I was at the time (because let’s face it, college ain’t cheap) here’s a photo of the chart from Kleon’s book that I copied into my journal.