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Master your craft. This is the first principle for anyone in the arts. It is the ultimate goal, the top of the mountain. But mastering one’s craft means dedicating yourself to the craft itself. It isn't just a hobby; it becomes your lifestyle. It dictates how you live, and everything you do should propel you forward in this lifelong pursuit.
But how does one actually go about it? What are the steps, and how do you know when you have truly reached Mastery?
The steps are simple to comprehend, but incredibly difficult to practice. Becoming a master does not tolerate you puttering about at odd moments. You cannot wait for inspiration, motivation, or the muse to strike. Though the muse may occasionally take you, you cannot afford to wait for her.
Here is the path.
Before you can say anything meaningful, you must learn how to speak.
In painting, the language is line, shape, color, texture, value, and direction. In film, it is understanding shot composition, story structure, and what Hitchcock meant by "Pure Cinema." You must learn the techniques.
Once you have learned your language, the next step is to absorb everything that has been said before you.
In the past, this required a Herculean effort. Édouard Manet traveled to the Prado in Spain just to study Velázquez. He wanted to see how a rose with five petals could be painted in only four brush strokes. Today, you can simply search for "Velázquez's Rose" online. You must watch the greatest films and study the greatest paintings to understand how your language has historically been used.
But that is the easy part. The hard part is that you must submit to a master.
You must sit at the feet of a mentor or a historical master and try to emulate them. Understand them as if you were them. This is incredibly difficult because you must suppress you.
Be brutally honest: What life have you lived so far? What profound story do you really have to tell? What great ideas must vomit forth from you when you are still so young and inexperienced in your craft? You do not yet have the discipline to espouse deep truths to the world. For most, the work produced in these first couple of decades will be, at best, pretty pictures, and at worst, mere sketches of great things to come.
Two decades. Maybe more, maybe less for some. But you must build the muscle memory. You must try all the techniques. You must attempt great things under the shadow of those who came before you.
This is where the real transition happens. To step into mastery, you must take a step back from your craft.
You must step back from your inspirations and your mentors. Throw out the books. Burn the tutorials. After a period of cooling off, you must put everything you have learned through the Mind Sieve.
In painting, the Mind Sieve works like this:
After some time has passed, you use only those notes and your memory to complete the painting. The things you forgot or left out simply don't matter; they weren't important to you. The things you remembered or noted are.
This is how you discover where your self-expression begins. An artist expresses oneself by what they choose to emphasize or de-emphasize.
That is what you must do with your artistic life. Step out into the work with what you know, forget the rest, and express yourself. At this stage, the rules, the fundamentals, and the "standards" matter only insofar as they matter to you.
When you can do that, you are finally standing at the doorstep of mastery. And that is where the real work begins.
This is the road to mastery. It is how it has always been, and it is how it will always be.
