Once you’ve gotten good at something, it’s similar to how all the advice from your parents starts to make sense once you’ve grown older. All the advice from those who were already good at the thing only starts to make sense once you’ve gotten good at the thing yourself. The irony, of course, is that you needed the advice much more before you became good at the thing yourself.

I find this to be especially true with art. You must slog through it on your own, no matter what. It is not like science. There are no repeatable steps. You could put all the same ingredients into your beaker as the person next to you and still end up with something completely different.

There are at least certain themes that seem to be consistent between artists. But even these themes suffer from being difficult to understand for amateurs. They are not themes that you can proactively put into place. They can only be seen through your own solipsistic lens, looking backwards on your own artistic development.