How To Develop Your Art Style

a guide byDaria Golab

Every single artist in the beginning of their art journey at some points faces a struggle. We love to look at pieces created by our peers and by people we admire and we start to see some patterns. We start to realize that we would always be able to recognize an artwork made by our favourite artist, because we recognize their style. And having a style turns out to be a goal we work towards believing that it’s this missing puzzle piece to making it in art industry.
I faced this struggle too and I still feel I’m not there yet. But as I was working on developing my art style, trying different things, improving and failing many times, I found some steps that helped me the most.
Bear in mind that probably every artist will have a different answer to this and there’s no such thing as one correct recipe for finding a style. This is just my opinion based on my experience and it’s important to look at this guide from the perspective of your own journey.
The first and the most important thing is to know your basics. Developing a style should come second after developing your skills.

First you have to be comfortable with drawing, with your materials and with subjects you want to draw. For example if you want to draw characters you should start with learning all about properly drawing human figure, anatomy, movement, expression, clothing and so one. And you should learn it as much as you can from life and from photos, not from other artist’s works. If your base is strong, if you feel comfortable with your skill, then start to play with it and gently push it into creating your own style. If you start playing with the figure without basics, you’ll end up with a developed style full of mistakes and at this point it will be hard to correct them. So if you want to draw something with your own style, first study it. Study as hard as you can.

Remember that you’ll probably never be perfectly happy with your skill; I don’t think any artist is, and you’ll be learning to draw for your whole life. But you want to be at the point where you feel that you know the subject, when you’re comfortable with it and ready to push it forward.

When I decided years ago that I want to draw portraits, I started drawing them all the time. And it wasn’t just drawing, I was measuring, studying, checking all distances between elements until the point where I knew them by heart. And years after that, I made a decision that I don’t just want to draw perfect portraits – I wanted to make illustrations with characters and make them unique, make them my own. So having this base, I could start changing things, playing with facial features and actually making my own characters from elements I already knew how to draw.

Now I have a different goal when it comes to what I want to draw, and even though I’ve been drawing for many years, I have to go back to step one. I have to study the thing I want to be good at, to later put it into my works and make a style out of it once again. And this cycle never ends but it definitely gets easier.

It’s easier to simplify something complicated than build something elaborate from something simple.

The same comes to drawing. It’s easier to simplify your style based on perfect skill than build a perfect skill from a simple style.

That’s why so many artists who have a very simple style that might look like a kindergarten drawing also have lots of amazing realistic drawings and studies in their archives if you start digging deeper. Of course, not all of them, there’s exception to every rule.

Alternatively, your style will just gradually develop itself while you’re working on your skill. Every single person sees the world differently and those little details that you notice, that no one else around you does, together with the way you hold your pencil and make your lines, will at some point develop into your very unique style.

The second thing is to study what you like. If you have your base and you struggle with finding your own style but you can point out artists that you love, study them.

But here is the important thing to remember: Don’t just copy their works. Don’t imitate. Study. Try to understand, do it consciously, write down things that you particularly love in their style, find out what is it that makes you love their style. This way you’ll have an understanding of what you like and you can make a decision what do you want to incorporate into your style. You can just pick some things and try them. If you like how someone uses colour in their works, break down their palette. Check it with colour theory, find out what is it that makes this particular palette speak to you, shift it, change it, pick colours that you love and then try it yourself. If you like someone’s linework, study it, draw like them, see how it works with your own hand, see if you’re comfortable with it, feel it and then try it in your own original work. And slowly, you’ll pick up things that feel good and they will become elements of your style.

Honestly, it’s really hard to come up with something original that has never done before. The amount of art and ideas created over the years of human existence is overwhelming and many people say that at this point in history, creating something brand new is very rare. So there’s nothing wrong about building your own thing based on other existing things, that’s how everyone does it, consciously or not.

The third thing: don’t beat yourself up if you feel like you don’t have a style.

You’ll always be the last person to notice that you actually have a style. I don’t know how it works, really, but just keep that in mind. I still feel that I don’t have a style, even though lots of people say that they can clearly see it. But there’s nothing wrong about it because it keeps you going forward, searching and pushing your limits. The moment you settle on something because you feel like this is it, you stop growing. And that’s the worst thing you can do. Stay curious, keep going forward, one foot in front of the other. Even if you’re going slow, if it’s forward, everything is fine. 

And there you have it – my three pieces of advice to help you discover and develop your art style. If you want to see exactly how I apply these things into my work, you can follow me on Instagram: @Dariaesste

Some of my artwork is available here on Launchora as free story covers; you’ve probably seen some of them, and if you’ve used them as cover art for your stories, thank you! And I hope that this guide has helped you figure out what kind of artist you want to be as a storyteller. Because what is art but just a story without words?

 

 

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