In the 1950’s and 60’s mail order magazine ads were designed towards artists with headlines such as “you are in demand, if you can draw”, A fascinating… money-making art career can be yours”. Also published were a variety of art tests, “draw this and find out if your an artist”. All these mail order ads were intriguing. I’m sure for every person that sat down to fill out the form and sent in a sketch anxiously waited to find out if they were in fact an artist or not.. an answer most likely came back “Yes, you are an artist”, with the next steps to pay for a program. However the ads from this time are very interesting and speak to the culture of the time. Most, if not all the ads were targeted towards men.
Take a step back in time…
Do you need a old magazine test to show if you’re an artist? NOPE! Within each artist there are traits, I believe, that are common.
Artist Traits
Always on. You can’t turn it off. Everywhere you go, you ‘see’ more than meets the eye. You process life through a creative lens.
Curiosity. You’re curious about the why’s and how’s in life.
Sensitivity. You experience emotions on a deeper level, being more self-aware your also prone to being self-critical.
Compassionate. Because you can ‘see’ more deeply, you are also more in touch with the struggles others go through.
Powers of Concentration. You have the ability to hyper-focus.
There are many other artists traits of course some negative.
But the bottom line is… you don’t need a test to tell you if you’re an artist. You just know it, it’s who you are, inside and out.
But, every now and then it’s fun to take an art test (especially the Facebook ones) just to validate yourself!
