How to Become an Artist (or Just Look Like One)

Things You’ll Need:
• Money
• Pen
• Vintage clothes
• Dirty hair
• Coffee
• Art supplies in your chosen medium
• Black clothes
• Chuck Taylor shoes
• Paper
Step 1 - Choose an artistic medium.
Step 2 - Purchase the tools necessary to create in your chosen medium.
Step 3 - Learn how to use your artistic tools, at least well enough to fake it if necessary, or talk as if you know something about them.
Step 4 - Study the work of artists who work in your chosen medium, memorize the names of three or four, and the name of their least recognizable and disdained work, which you will tout as a masterpiece and misunderstood.
Step 5 - Lower your hygiene standards; artists have oily hair, dirty clothes and reek of genius, and two days without a shower.
Step 6 - Buy your clothes from resale stores, thrift shops or expensive trendy vintage clothing stores (but don’t admit the last one if you want to keep your artist cred).
Step 7 - Haunt coffee shops late at night, with a hollow-eyed gaze, and the stains from your chosen medium covering your clothing, hands and anything else appropriate.
Step 8 - When you are otherwise not engaged in café haunting, art supply shopping, or picking up chicks and/or dudes, try to make some good art.

Tips & Warnings:
• Choose an artistic medium with your budget and studio space in mind: becoming a wood turner requires heavy, expensive equipment and some room, while the watercolorist can create in cramped conditions at a bargain price.
• Research the artists in your chosen medium at the library or nearest bookstore; no need to spend money on art texts, just bring a pad of paper and take notes.
• If you cannot bear to go without a shower for days, employ one of the bevy of products available to give your hair that “I just crawled out of bed and "couldn't care less what you think" look.
• Black cotton, orange and day-glo green polyester simply scream “artist” these days, as do screen-printed T-shirts and the ubiquitous Chuck Taylors (see Resources below for Converse shoes).
• Consider getting a day job that supports your artist identity: waiter/waitress, barista, art supply clerk, nanny, dog walker and morgue attendant are popular options.
• Don’t quit your day job if you’re lucky enough to have one; artists are notoriously underpaid, even real artists have to work hard to keep bread on the table, much less poseurs without artistic ambition.
• Don’t overuse your art as a pick-up line or you may become a running gag among the single scene, “Oh, here comes that guy again, the one who says he’s an Artist.”

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