Stealing Like an Artist

I love to experiment with drawing and other forms of art, but when faced with an empty page I seize up with fear. I never seem to know how to begin, and I'm all-too-conscious of my lack of training. Also I feel like I still don't have my own original art "style." So every so often I channel Austin Kleon who counsels that we should "steal like an artist." (He's the one who created the chart up above.)

At the 2025 Society of Illustrators' Original Art Exhibit I took the following photo of an illustration Anna Pirolli created for her book There Are No Ants in This Book.

I loved the way she used bright colors and zoomed up so close on the face of her character. I decided to take a stab at imitating what she'd done.

Next, I tried to push myself from mere imitation to creating something of my own. So I created some original drawings, continuing to focus on bright colors and close-ups of faces. Here's what I created:

I'm still not quite at "good theft" territory yet. I'm riffing off the work of just one artist and the pieces I produced are still pretty imitative (especially that first one!). But it definitely was a fun experiment. I appreciated the opportunity to push myself beyond what I would have done if merely faced with the empty page. Big thanks to both Anna Pirolli and Austin Kleon!