About:

The Quizzes:

The Watts Artist Type Quizzes were developed to help artists understand themselves in much the same way as personality tests like The Enneagram, The Big 5 Aspects Test, and Myers-Briggs have helped so many in the general population understand their temperaments. What makes these quizzes unique is that they’ve been designed specifically for artists.

Whether you’re a musician, painter, actor, dancer, photographer, writer, illustrator, chef, designer, or any other kind of creator, The Watts Artist Type Quiz (Quiz #1) will act as a mirror and magnifying glass to help you gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of your artistic temperament.

Your results will also give you a framework from which to relate to and understand other Artist Types. This is particularly helpful in the context of creative collaborations, where incredibly nuanced interpersonal dynamics are at play.

There are 10 distinct Artist Types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The Watts Creative Work Type Quiz (Quiz #2) is a companion quiz which focuses on identifying the distinct ways in which you function in the context of a career in the arts. There are 7 distinct Creative Work Types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

For example, on one extreme, there are Creative Work Types who thrive in the entrepreneurial landscape, handling all aspects of their career. While on the other end of the spectrum, there are Creative Work Types who function much better in the context of a company, where they can leave the business details to others, (so they can focus more thoroughly on their creative work).

Understanding exactly where you fall on the spectrum relative to other artists is helpful in navigating your path at the intersection of art and commerce.

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It can be a lot of fun to compare and contrast your results with those of your artist friends and associates. While on a deeper level, knowing each other’s Artist and Creative Work Types can be extremely helpful in understanding the nuanced interpersonal dynamics that are often at play in creative situations. We’re then setup to have more patience for each other’s differences (and to value them more than we may otherwise have), and to navigate our collaborations more effectively.

The Story:

The Watts Artist Type Quizzes were created by 50x Platinum Songwriter, Producer, Multi-Medium Artist, Author, and Educator, Adam Watts.

With a deep interest in interpersonal dynamics and an appreciation for personality assessments like The Enneagram and The Big 5 Aspects Test, Watts began to develop a similar assessment designed specifically for those wonderfully idiosyncratic human beings we call artists.

Fascinated by the notion that one’s gifting combines with their personalities and eccentricities to form a unique creative identity, Watts began to create detailed profiles of these identities and identified 10 distinct Artist Types. Taking it a step further, Watts realized that regardless of their Artist Type, creative artists had distinct ways in which they would navigate the business landscape. He then used the same processes to identify 7 distinct Creative Work Types.

The result are two interrelated quizzes that organize these identities into distinct two Primary Artist Types;

• The Watts Artist Type Quiz (10 types)

• The Watts Creative Work Type Quiz (7 types)

After more than two decades working behind the scenes in the entertainment business (in the music, film, tv, fine art worlds and beyond), Watts noticed profoundly distinct personality traits in the wide variety of creatives he worked with and observed. It was as if artists fell into distinct categories. They each interacted in ways that were consistent and surprisingly predictable (even, paradoxically, in their unpredictability).

In his words, “I began to realize that artists are like their own species. I noticed that within that species, it’s almost as if there are different breeds. Each with their own distinct traits and intrinsic ways of approaching the creative process.

I thought that it would be useful and fun to see if I could identify a concise list of distinct artist types. Ones that I’d seen not only in my own experience, but out in the world, beyond my own experiences and throughout history.

I felt that if I could accurately name and define these distinct types then it could be extremely helpful in similar ways that The Enneagram and The Big 5 Aspects Tests have been for people to not only understand themselves but how they interact with others.

Though every artist is incredibly complex, my aim was to define each type in such a way that every artist past and present could fit snuggly into a Primary Artist Type.

So after considerable thought, research, and development I’m very excited about the resulting two quizzes; The Artist Type Quiz and The Creative Work Type Quiz. The results of each, when combined, form a complete picture of how the artist tends to function creatively as well as in the context of a career in the arts.

As I began to share the quizzes, the feedback from artists has been very validating with the overwhelming majority expressing that their results were extremely accurate.

My goal has never been to pigeonhole artists or narrowly define them, but rather to give them a kind of mirror and magnifying glass to help them further understand their uniqueness relative to others so that they could have a sense of orientation and relativity not only in their inner creative worlds, but also in the context of collaborations, and in business situations.”