The title irritated me first.
I’ll be honest – the title Steal Like an Artist (one of the most talked about book by Austin Kleon) irritated me almost immediately.
As someone who has spent years trying to build a visual voice online, “stealing” is not exactly my favourite creative philosophy. We already live in a time where inspiration and imitation blur into each other so quickly that sometimes it genuinely becomes uncomfortable to tell the difference.
So when I started the book, I was defensive.
I kept thinking:
“Please don’t tell people copying is okay.”
Because honestly, I have seen what the internet does with ideas.
I’ve seen people recreate visual styles, concepts, aesthetics, storytelling formats and even emotional structures almost frame-by-frame. And not as practice. Not as learning. But as content production.
Somewhere between “trend inspiration” and “content strategy,” creativity slowly started looking strangely identical.
And maybe that’s why this book became so misunderstood too.
But then, while reading it, I realised Austin Kleon wasn’t really asking people to become photocopy machines at all.
If anything, he kept repeating:
- stay curious
- read constantly
- observe deeply
- work every day
- experiment
- let yourself be influenced
- create enough to eventually discover your own voice
And honestly? That’s not shortcut culture.
That’s work.
Inspiration vs Replication
I think the internet has confused inspiration with replication.
To me, inspiration is when you understand how someone thinks.
Not just what they make.
It’s understanding:
- how they observe life
- how they process emotions
- how they arrive at ideas
- what experiences shaped their perspective
And then allowing all of that to pass through your own life before creating something.
Replication feels very different.
Replication is when people recreate anything without adding anything of themselves into it. Same visual language. Same emotional structure. Same storytelling. Same everything.
And honestly, this is where the internet kind of loses me.
One line from the book that genuinely stayed with me was:
“Don’t steal the style. Steal the thinking behind the style.”
Now that made sense to me. Because there’s a huge difference between studying someone’s mind and wearing their skin.
I think people forget that aesthetics are not born overnight. Most artists arrive at their visual voice after years of experimenting, observing, failing, changing, evolving and living.
So when people only copy the outer result without understanding the years behind it, something starts feeling emotionally hollow about it.
Not bad.
Not talentless.
Just… disconnected.
Like photocopies talking to photocopies.
The Internet Is Slowly Training People Out of Originality
And honestly, I think algorithms play a huge role in this.
Because algorithms reward familiarity.
But creativity usually requires uncertainty.
A lot of creators today are no longer asking:
“What do I actually think?”
They’re asking:
“What is already working?”
And slowly, creativity starts becoming:
- trend recreation
- aesthetic repetition
- pattern recognition
- performance over perspective
Which is sad because voice is not a font.
It’s not an editing style.
It’s not a colour palette.
Voice is an accumulated perspective.
It’s the depth behind why you believe what you believe.
And I think that part takes time.
You cannot build voice without living.
Without observing.
Without questioning yourself.
Without experiences colliding with each other long enough for something personal to emerge.
Sometimes I think people want originality without the discomfort of experimentation and failure.
But experimentation is messy.
It’s slow.
It’s awkward.
And sometimes it doesn’t perform well online.
Replication is easier.
Maybe that’s why it’s everywhere.
Looking Creative vs Living Creatively
I also think there’s a huge difference between looking creative and living creatively.
Living creatively means:
- being curious enough to go down rabbit holes
- wondering about random things
- reading constantly
- observing people deeply
- sitting with boredom
- experimenting privately before performing publicly
One of my favourite parts of the book was when Austin Kleon spoke about boredom.
That deeply resonated with me because honestly, some of my best ideas come when I’m doing absolutely nothing productive.
I’ll just be sitting somewhere bored and suddenly some random thought collides with another random memory and then something starts building itself in my head.
A metaphor.
A visual.
A journal page.
A sentence.
And if I don’t immediately write it down somewhere, it disappears within ten minutes.
That’s also why I loved his emphasis on carrying notebooks around.
Ideas are fragile.
And creativity, at least to me, has never felt mechanical. It feels accumulative. Like life is quietly collecting inside you until something suddenly clicks into place.
Why Hands Matter
Another part I deeply agreed with was:
“Don’t forget to use your digits.”
Your hands are your original devices.
And honestly, I believe this so strongly.
There’s something psychologically different about physically making things.
Threads.
Paper.
Paint.
Glue.
Writing things down by hand.
It slows you down enough to actually think.
I think tactile creation engages us differently because it forces us to experience ideas instead of instantly producing them.
And maybe that’s also why I get slightly uncomfortable when creativity becomes entirely algorithm-driven.
Because the more instant everything becomes, the less space we leave for curiosity, accidents, boredom, experimentation, and emotional processing.
And sometimes originality quietly begins exactly there- in the messy little moments where you’re just making things with your hands without trying to optimise them.
Where I Still Felt Conflicted
One part of the book that still left me with mixed feelings was the idea that “nothing is original.” And honestly, I understand what Austin Kleon meant by that.
Of course we are influenced by everything around us:
- books
- conversations
- people
- memories
- emotions
- experiences
- art
No idea appears out of complete emptiness.
But I also don’t fully believe originality is dead. I think inspired things become original when they pass through someone’s lived experience.
When you add:
- your perspective
- your beliefs
- your emotions
- your contradictions
- your memories
- your way of seeing the world
…something shifts.
The end result may still carry traces of influence, but it starts becoming unmistakably yours.
And maybe that’s the difference.
There’s actually a beautiful Gestalt psychology analogy mentioned in the book about two parallel lines drawn slightly apart from each other.
Most people would say they’re looking at two lines.
But there’s also an invisible third line formed in the space between them.
And honestly?
I think originality exists in that hidden third line.
Not in creating from emptiness. And not in copying what already exists either. But in the strange, invisible space between influences and personal perspective.
I’ve unpacked this thought further here. (link)
So, Did We Misunderstand the Book?
After finishing Steal Like an Artist, I honestly don’t think Austin Kleon was encouraging theft at all.
I think he was encouraging people to:
- observe deeply
- study curiously
- read constantly
- experiment fearlessly
- create consistently
- and work hard enough to eventually discover their own voice
And maybe that’s the part people missed.
Maybe we live in a time where shortcuts are more appealing than creative stamina. Or maybe we simply became too obsessed with outcomes and forgot about process.
Either way, I don’t think the book was asking us to become copy machines.
I think it was asking us to pay closer attention.