So I finished these two library books this month; don’t worry – one was really short and had less, smaller-sized pages. It also helped that both were to the point, and engaging.<\/p>\n
Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon<\/a> – this book is the shorter one [with smaller pages]. I only discovered this book after I stumbled across his “Show Your Work” book<\/a> at a Mr. K’s<\/a> Used Book Store [and more]. I quickly devoured “Show Your Work!” [a must read, will review later!] and wanted to read “Steal” because the title intrigued me. It also doesn’t help that I’m a former child clepto(maniac) [short stint, it was only a few months and before Navy Exchanges had security cams (you can thank my siblings and I for that). Anyway, back to the mini-review; Kleon has 10 tips on being creative. Anyway, that’s it for now! Thanks for reading! And of course, keep on reading! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I finished these two library books this month; don’t worry – one was really short and had less, smaller-sized pages. It also helped that both were to the point, and engaging. Do Cool Sh*t by Miki Agrawal – I’ll admit I was drawn to read this, not just because of the title, but because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6RKYn-e1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hazelbasil.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDo Cool Sh*t by Miki Agrawal<\/a> – I’ll admit I was drawn to read this, not just because of the title, but because the author is a twin [for those of you that don’t know, I am a twin]. I don’t want to give away any spoilers. I will say this, if I’d been a better time manager, I’d have finished this book in 3 days. Instead, it took me 3 weeks. I started it two weeks ago and was about halfway through it. And then just finished it two Sundays ago, in less than 2 days [Yeah, I’m still a slow reader, and a horrible time manager (too much tv!)].
\nMy main takeaways: know what you want, but know who you\/what you are really capable of [are you really talented in _____? we don’t want the American Idol judges laughing at you], set\/follow\/change your plans [sometimes life throws curve balls]; be honest with yourself [we all have limitations], be prepared [always make plans] and be bold [meet people]! One of the things I learned about myself is, as much as I love to freelance, I’m not as “entrepreneurial” as I’d like to be. I need to work on that, or accept the fact that I’m just a part-time freelancer. <\/p>\n
\nMy takeaways: don’t really steal someone’s work, just be inspired to create your own work and do it already! One of my favorite tips is to keep a physical notebook with you at all times [I have one in my purse], but actually WORK on your ideas [I’ve yet to do this on a regular basis]. Another favorite takeaway: have two desks, one where you can draw\/doodle, and a digital desk [computer\/laptop] to keep your work flow separate. Simply because sometimes, the work can be different or completed differently. For example, if it’s an illustration project that you want to keep non-digital, then don’t bring over to digitize it, until you are completely done with it [processing it, or even thoroughly thinking it through]. Sometimes, artists can interrupt the work by ‘digitizing’ it too soon. I’m guilty of that.<\/p>\n