You get an idea. It comes to you as if from divine inspiration. You catch a mental glimpse of the purest, most beautiful design imaginable hiding inside your head and instantly need a sketchbook or canvas. There is an immaculate concept being birthed inside your mind, and it is only you who is able to turn this beautiful idea into a reality. These next five steps are what will get that idea on canvas.

You Forget the Idea

And it’s gone. You had an idea, sure. But you don’t any more. Simply touching your pencil was enough to ensure you lost it entirely. Think. It’s gone. Maybe if you can recreate the exact situation you were in when you had the idea, it will come to you again. Go back to what you were doing.

Epiphany

It’s back! Whatever it was you were doing must have somehow been behind the inspiration. It is back as instantly as it left! Concentrate on it, now, and make sure you don’t forget it again. The enjoyment of children for generations to come rests in your ability to bring life to this idea.

Realization of Inability

You can’t create art. I don’t know who ever gave you the idea that you could turn concept into reality, but they have lied to you. Look at this attempt. It looks nothing like the tangible essence of an angels’ choir you envisioned in your head, but this wouldn’t even pass for hotel art. It is the visual equivalent of elevator music. You should be ashamed to call yourself an artist. Go back to school and sign up for business classes like your mother advised you to.

Realization of Ability

Wait, no. You do know how to create art. You can bring forth shape with but a brush, invoke the third dimension with only color. Reality is yours to manipulate. Time is all you need. The first attempt was only a warm-up for what you are now creating. This. This is art.

Art

Several hours later, you stare at a completed work. Not completed, it could use a tiny bit more detail. You don’t know where, just that it is needed. You have approached the canvas countless times, your brush hovering millimeters from the still-wet surface, only to hesitate and rethink your entire life. Should this shade of blue cover that slightly lighter shade of blue? Should you have even started this painting? Should you have even decided that art was what you wanted to do for the rest of your life?

Finally, in desperation you attack the canvas with all the finishing touches you have so long debated. You have gone too far. It was perfect as it was. You have ruined a perfect piece of art. You have painted the mustache on the Mona Lisa.

But it is finished. You immediately show it to all your friends, to see if they see all your hideous errors. They do not. You feel like a magician or a con artist, tricking them into not seeing what is right there. The truth is your friends don’t really care. They don’t even appreciate art.