How Do You Do That? What Nobody Tells You About Making Things

Most people don't need more technique.

They need permission.

After many years of teaching art — and forty years of asking "how do you do that?" — Rob Forlani has learned that the biggest obstacle standing between a blank canvas and a finished painting was never talent. It was permission. Permission to begin. To make a mess. To be average. To fail. To enjoy yourself. To matter.

How Do You Do That? is not a book about how to paint. It's about the psychological territory between wanting to make something and actually doing it — the inner critic, the imposter syndrome, the comparison, the fence-looking, the waiting for conditions that never arrive.

Drawing on stories from his studio — the $4 serving platter that changed how his students saw themselves, the daughter who accidentally coined a creative philosophy from behind a bedroom door, the painting that sold for a carton of Guinness — Forlani offers a different kind of creativity book. One built not on rules, but on release.

Inside you'll find:

    •    The Dial — why "abstract enough" is the wrong question, and how to find your own place between abstraction and realism
    •    CBF — a permission-slip philosophy for creating without the weight of outcome
    •    Find Your Fingerprint — how to stop imitating and start recognizing the style that was already yours
    •    Stop — how to know when a piece is finished, before you paint over the best part
    •    Fear — naming the six specific fears that quietly stop people from ever beginning

Whether you paint, write, sculpt, cook, or have simply been standing in front of your own blank canvas for years wondering where to start, this book will hand you back what you never actually lost.

Your fingerprint is already there.

Now pick up the brush.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​