Art style.
Arguably two of the biggest buzz words in the art community. Every time you turn around, someone is sharing a new video on how to find your art style, how to study other art styles, whether or not you need an art style, etc…
But what even is an art style? I believe it’s a combination of three ingredients that, when blended together, create your artistic voice.
Inspiration + Information + Implementation = Your Own Art Style
1) Inspiration. The truth is, we are not original. The art we make isn’t something entirely all of its own. We are constantly being inspired by both the world around us and the artists we admire. We pull color palettes from nature. We adopt tid-bits of rendering styles from our favorite animation. We build shapes like J.C. Leyendecker or exaggerate proportions like Aaron Blaise. We take moments of our daily lives and paint them into our illustrations. A big, beautiful part of finding your art style is simply the process of pulling inspiration from the things and the people you love.
2) Information. There are many “rules” to art and many fundamentals to master. Your skill level in these different fundamentals as well as the “art rules” you choose to break greatly affect your art style. Maybe you’re a master at values, but uncomfortable mixing colors, so you focus on creating monochromatic illustrations that are dynamic and give an immediately clear read. Maybe you have one composition style you’re an expert at and choose to create all of your paintings with that composition format. One of my favorite examples of artists who break art rules is the Cartoon Saloon Animation Studio. They break the rules of perspective quite often! From roads that look like they’re falling off the face of the earth to floorboards that don’t recede in space like they “should”. But this broken rule/neglect of this fundamental is a part of their style!
3) Implementation. You can find all the inspiration you want and take every art class on every fundamental, but the magic only happens if you DO SOMETHING with it. To develop your own art style, you have to be creating. You have to be trying new things, new mediums, breaking and following different art rules. You’ll pull a little something from another artist and find that it really doesn’t suit your tastes after all. You’ll try dip pens for the first time and discover your love for lines.
It is only when you combine these three things that you’ll find your art style. That you’ll discover the things you love and don’t love, the mediums and subjects that speak to you and the ones that don’t. The rendering methods that make you giddy and the ones that make you gag.
And just remember, artists are always changing and growing, and inevitably your art style will too. Don’t be afraid to try new things!