Each of us sometimes encounters creative difficulties.
Barber’s creative work is sometimes in crisis.
By the way, you can always please yourself with new hair cutting shears.
And the barber is as much a creator as an artist, sculptor or writer.
Today Galor recommends Austin Cleon’s Steal Like an Artist to anyone facing a lack of ideas.
And in this article we will consider only some aspects, based on the theses of the book.
Agree, working like a craftsman standing on the stream is, of course, cool, you can test yourself and swing your skill and endurance many times over, but sometimes you want to show your creative side. Make an incredible styling or haircut, come up with something pretentious, stand out from the rest.
But even this is quite difficult considering how quickly the market is developing. How to find your style? Do you need it? What is there to invent if everything was invented before you?
In fact, an honest creator will answer: I steal ideas.
But a bad thief is one who steals outright – stupidly copying. A good thief steals an idea and passes it through himself, through the prism of his understanding and passes the idea through his heart – and at the exit he gets a completely new result.
In fact, it has long been clear that there is nothing original. Everything has already been said and done before us. And if someone does something “new” in your opinion, then you simply did not recognize where it was borrowed from.
But this does not mean that we urgently need to look at the work of top barbers and copy their work. Ideas – maybe yes, but not all. But not work.
After all, we are talking a little about something else – about what can inspire you.
Remember the series of photos of bearded guys with flowers inserted into the beard? These photos literally flooded the Internet.
The creators are inspired by nature. That’s what it means to borrow well. Borrowed from nature itself.
Choosing what is worth stealing is also important.
Surround yourself with things that affect you, that resonate in your soul. Make the mixture of your surroundings as varied as possible.
In fact, you yourself are a mixture of everything that you decided to let into your life. You are the sum of the influences exerted on you.
Perhaps you can continue to watch the work of top barbers and strive to become the same cool – it’s great when you want to be equal to the best, but don’t forget about your hobbies. About what is interesting to you, your personality.
You don’t need to steal their work, you need to steal their train of thought. Why do they do it this way and not otherwise? For what reason does he reason this way and not that? If you copy stupidly without understanding the “why”, then everything that you create, in an attempt to repeat, will be simply fake.
A quick tip from Austin Cleon’s Steal Like an Artist:
Get yourself a notebook and pen. Or, bring your phone “notes” as close to your thumb as possible. Be prepared to jot down any ideas that pop into your head.
Roughly speaking, create yourself a folder for the stolen goods.
“Do you see something worth borrowing? Send it to your stolen folder. Need inspiration? Open the folder for stolen goods.
Newspaper reporters refer to this folder as “the dead man’s” – and I like the name. Your dead folder is where you keep the “dead”, which you will revive later, in your own works. “
Steal anything that resonates with or fuels your imagination. Greedily absorb all impressions and phenomena: old and new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, casual conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, streams of water, light and shadows. And steal only what finds a lively response in your soul. If you do this, your work – your theft – will be original.
– Jim Jarmusch, filmmaker.
Perhaps it’s very simple in view. Actually, you need to start copying. It doesn’t have to be displayed – but copying is mandatory. After all, a novice auto mechanic first disassembles the car for parts in order to understand how it works.
You must copy to learn the basics. To establish a base for yourself, you cannot live without it. No one picks up scissors or a typewriter and starts making the purest fade. First you copy the technique of some, then others. And only then comes the realization that you understand everything so clearly that you are ready to create something of your own.
Start copying what you like. Copy. Copy. Copy. Copy. And you will find yourself.
– Yohji Yamamoto, clothing designer.
We learn to speak by copying the sounds we hear. Artists learn to paint by copying what they see – trees, houses, or other artists’ paintings. Musicians copy scales.
Even the Beatles started out with covers. Paul McCartney recalled: “I copied Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis. We all did that. “
It is quite obvious that those who do not want to copy have too high a high opinion of themselves and their talents. Someone who does not want to copy is unlikely to create something great, because they simply will not know where to start.
And if you, being a barber, are at a dead end, there is nothing easier to start over. Just watch what resonates in your soul and start copying and then transferring to work.
As a result, you will definitely create something of your own.
