When I started making webpages,  I had no idea what I was doing . . . and 6 years later I'm still flying by the seat of my pants.

When I began manipulating graphics, I couldn't put two pixels together and I had zero sense of capability, let alone talent.  Nobody, in my lifetime of over half a century, had ever said I had "artistic talent".  In my thirties, I was in a goal defining seminar and the moderator asked me why there were no creative goals on my list of lifetime aims. I told him I just wasn't a creative type. Today I still know perfectly well that there are whole universes of knowledge and skill I lack.  I will never claim a high level of knowledge, because I know better, ha ha.  Everywhere I look, I see the work of the Exquisitely Talented and Brilliantly Endowed.  So humility is easy for me.  I never try to lean on talent because mine just won't support me.

But I want to do digital design.  I want to play with colors and shapes. I want to give visual form to my daydreams. I just want to.  That's the key.  I can't worry about whether I have talent or not.  Am I upset because I don't know what I'm doing?  Being upset takes too much time away from doing what I want to do.  So I don't give a fig (note euphemism) for the talent I lack. I care about the desire I've got.  And fortunately I possess a few qualities that are even more useful than talent.  I have the key Scorpionic Gift that's perfect for both digital design and figureskating:  certainty of desire and the willingness to act persistently on my desire.

I have a lifelong habit of identifying outcomes I want and flogging myself like a slave for Pharoah until the pyramid is built. I'm only a fraction of the way up the side of that pyramid today.  But if I don't yet know how to quarry granite . . . fine, I'll do a 20-year apprenticeship in hewing and hauling.  In digital design, if I have to do every graphics tutorial online, okey dokey.  If I have to do each tutorial three to five times (my average) before I get it right, no problem.  I'm still learning at least as fast as a German Shepard and my learning is steady because it is driven by my burning desire.

One of the methods I use to advance myself in pyramid-building is to identify specific practical skills I want, find the right books or tutorials, go over them page by page, and practice new skills overandover until they become natural to me.  That's why I have so many webgraphics floating all over the Internet:  I was willing to make a thousand mistakes as fast as possible. Each mistake or inadequate effort represents specific learning curves I was negotiating at that time.  Any piece of work I did yesterday makes me cringe today, because it represents earlier stages of ignorance.  So what!  I'm no longer thinking about what I did yesterday, I'm focused on the stuff I'm doing now.  And all examples of my former ignorance  represent the vital, burning, sizzling desire I've still got going for me today.

With no exaggeration, I can say that it took me three months to figure out how to do javascripted rollover buttons.  Not only am I not talented, I'm not very smart about code, either.  But instead of talent, I have the willingness to plod along no matter how stupid I feel.   I've had the same Slogging Through the Mud Experience with Flash, as well. But do I care?  Hell no . . . because my desire is burning steadily.

If you have burning desires, here's a practical idea for making big leaps toward your goals . . .

1.  Look around the internet and identify 10 examples of skills you want to have.  Don't waste any time standing in awe of the people who designed those graphics or websites you envy.  Instead, as specifically as possible, try to identify the skill or knowledge it would take to produce what you admire.  Be very specific, like:  "I want to learn how to make 3-way rollovers" or "I want to make chrome letters" or "I want to make vector based cartoons".

2.  Choose one of those examples and do some research to find the books, tutorials, and /or software which would enable the specific skill or knowledge you want.  If necessary, use the resources list on my website, follow it to other people's lists of tutorials and resources.  Go to forums and ask questions until you find the right instruction.  Nag people for the information, if necessary.  And be prepared to bribe anybody you have to.

3.  Practice until your arm drops off. No kidding, until your arm drops off and the letters on your keyboard are worn away.

4.  Use the skills you acquire to actually produce something to showcase on your own website.  In other words, put the knowledge to immediate practical use, whether you feel talented or creative or masterful or not.  You need some sort of "target" application of your own to which to apply new skills.

5.  Then go on to the next skill on your list.  When you get done with that list, make another list from new examples.

Hey!  You won't need any talent for this, but it will soon begin to feeeeeeeel like what talent must feel like to the talented.  It might start out like "copying" because you need some direction to shoot in.  I'm sure Rubens knew he was copying during the years he spent in Italy learning from the earlier masters. But it will eventually turn into creative innovation.  And after a while you will have a body of work you will want to ignore just like I do, because you will be singlemindedly focused on the next set of skills and the new work.  And you will be  . . . a digital designer . . . no matter what anybody else says.

Could be as simple as just wanting to play with color and texture . . . like a little kid enjoys playing with finger paints.  For myself, I'm simply gaga nutso over playing with  colors.  Whatever your particular burning desire is, trust and follow it.

High Tolerance
For Frustration 

You need the willingness to do stuff over and over and over until you get things to look the way you want or the code works or someone wants what you have produced . . . or whatever your criteria for successful is.  The only thing that can support your tolerance for this much frustration is . . . burning desire.

Willingness and Undying Persistence to Learn  The Tools Of the Trade

Don't be a closeminded snob about using only specific programs or think you are above using filters or production tools or licensing clipart or stock photography. Burning desire has little to do with such small thinking. Creativity is amplified, rather than smothered, by learning how to combine many instruments to achieve digital effects.  And all of those tools require skill in themselves; it's not just like pushing a button, you now?  The tools that are available extend possibilities.  But the only thing that will get you through all those learning curves is burning desire.

Ability to ignore anything and anybody (except sick children) that steals time and saps your energy.

Creative expression takes cultivation, however talentless it may be.  I kid you not. Ignore anything that doesn't support your burning desire.

See Also . . . 

So You Wannabe A Webdesigner? I

  
So You Wannabe A Webdesigner? II:
  
The Bigger The Webdesigner, The Bigger The Target