Beth Peterson over at the About.com Pottery site was blogging about skill versus talent recently, and I thought this was an interesting topic to ponder. Sure, you will never be good at anything, including most arts and crafts, if you don’t take the time to practice, but is it all simply a matter of skills that you acquire? Is talent in that mix, and if so how much of how you develop as a designer is related to talent?

I tend to think it is a mixture of both, with skills being the more important of the two. You can be talented and brilliant, but if you don’t apply yourself, you’ll never achieve the same level of craft work you could if you put the time into practice. I also think most people are creative and talented; they just may not have given themselves a chance to investigate that side of their brains so to speak. I just don’t believe it when I hear people say things like, “Oh, I could never make that or do that particular craft (jewelry, crochet, knitting, mixed-media, fill-in-the-blank).” I always want to ask back, “Have you even tried?”