A little something i felt i should type up, so here you have what i have learned through experience.

1. Everyone is an artist and by everyone i mean everyone, yeah even that creepy neighbor who is always yelling stuff at 3 am. we are all born with art in our blood but through time most people tend to forget about it and it meaning, there is this story:

    F: Father  D: Daughter

"f: one day when i came home from work my daughter greeted me at the door d: welcome home dad!   f: thanks sweetie,   D: dad   f: what is it sweetie? d: today at school our teacher asked us what our dad did for a living and i didn't know what you do,     f: oh well , im an art teacher, i teach other people how to draw and paint   d: grown ups forget how to draw? " yeah thats pretty much the whole story the point is that we all *know* how to draw (paint...etc) but through time we get into different stuff and what not and we just forget about it. what i believe is that even if you can only draw a stick figure well that stick figure is unique why? because you drew it and because no matter what technique (or where you started) the stick figure is absolutely perfect because its your own style, you are the master an no one can beat you at it. 

2. you have to be humble (modest) about your art. Just because you are *good* and by good i mean at a certain style maybe your own or some other. realistic, crosshatching you name it. does not give you the right to criticize in a bad way other's people's art, (i think it sucks, not good, ) just because yours is *better* ,an artist does not do that. thats not an artist.

3. There is no right or wrong in art whatever you draw or paint is perfect the way it is, Lee Hammond said once "whatever the artist draws is what he sees" is you are trying to draw from a picture and it doesn't look the same, well thats how you saw the picture and the style you used to draw it.

4. Practice makes perfect people! even though no one is perfect? yes. *My* realistic drawing skills come from practicing and sketching the same thing again and again for like 2-4 hrs a day (that was during summers i think now its about 15-45min a day since i dont need to practice anything.but to try new things.) believe it or not i started drawing last year here http://s945.photobucket.com/home/3011721/recentuploads?page=1  you can see a few sketches and stuff like that, someone told me once "it takes months to build abs and it takes months even years to become a *good* artist" so just keep drawing random stuff, even if its the same thing again and again, i draw the same eye on whatever i can draw on and now i can say i can draw a pretty decent realistic eye.(my style, my definition of realistic).

5. this is the fun part, We all artists are the ones that see things in a different way and make other people see it too, the artist is the one that gives mystery to the world the artist is the only one that can make music with pencil for people's eyes and minds, the artist makes a stand and shows his point of view and also intrigues people and makes them question things. one of the most important is we express our feelings through art. 

thats pretty much it, thats what an artist is to me and its characteristics. you can add your own is you want to.

6. ?

too long just to say that we all feel the necesity to express who we are