This is a very interesting article with some interesting opinion-based discussion about the 33 rules to being an Artist. What I mean by opinion-based is that there are some of the points from the author Jerry Saltz that I disagree with. Just a quick disclaimer, I do support most of the ideas from the article because not only that I learn a lot of useful materials as a beginner artist, but also like how he express his opinions freely. I also taste a little irony between his lines when he takes about the real-life vs. expected life.

Let’s talk about the format of the article. The author phases his main 33 points as”lesson” and organizes them into Six steps of how to become an artist. I really like how he does the formatting of the article because of every time when I want to start doing something new, I usually would like to have a guild to help me not doing through the wrong direction. Moreover, I really like how he starts his Step from the individuals’ mindset to a big, real art world point of view.  (From learning to become an artist to how to survive, but most importantly the individual’s attitude)

I really like how Jerry Saltz’s ideas on “Lesson 3: Feel Free to Imitate” and we can also relate the theme with “Lesson 17: See As Much As You Can”. In my opinions, we learn from imitation. Children learn how to speak by imitating their parents, Students learn how to solve homework problems by doing the practice questions and aunts are learning dance moves by watching Youtube videos. It is fair to say that we are imitating and learning from others every day. In addition, I know a lot of guitarists such as James Hetfield from Metalica starts off playing cover songs with friends until he realized that he wanted to improve and produced his own songs and stepped out his comfort zoon.

There is one lesson that I think the author is overly opinion-based, which is “Lesson 26: Make an Enemy of Envy”. Personally that I find envy can also help to improve ourself by having a positive attitude. Let’s say my cousin receives a higher GPA than I do in this semester. Surely I will be envy about it because I have already put in a lot of efforts toward my academic, but still not the best student in the family. In that case, I will only be upset for a period of time and ask my cousin for advice on how to improve my study strategy and learn from him.  In other words, envy will let me understand that there are always better people out there that I can learn from. If I can have a positive and humble mindset, I believe that I can improve myself in the long run.

I also find out an interesting thing about this article is that Jerry Saltz repeats “Get to work” many times throughout the article. The most attractive “Get to work” in my opinion is in “Lesson 21: Define Success” where I feel like he is ironic about reducing full-time work to 3 days a week and not get depressed anymore to “now get to work or quit”. It is telling people the fact that real life is very different than expected. If people can not handle the depression in real-life, it is more than likely that people will quit being an artist.  He also wants to remind his readers using  “Get to work” at the end of the article, concerning difficulties, never gives up and act now!

In conclusion, this is a very interesting article to read. There are a lot of decent and positive comments that we can learn as a beginner toward both becoming an individual artist and the have the correct attitude with the art world.