Coinciding YouTube video found here!
How to find your art style ist he most asked question in the art community. However, along my journey I realised that finding an art style is…overrated? Instead, our artistic voice is what matters and defining out why is where it begins…
An artist has many styles but only one voice. As we grow as an artist our voice is inevitably going to change, when we pick up new techniques, new mediums, inspirations and have different experiences that fuel our creative drive to communicate.
I hear many people say that they have a lot of different styles but when I go and view their portfolio of work, I can tell that all the pieces are created by the same person.
It’s about how you hold the paintbrush both figuratively and literally, that authenticates the work as yours.
By dictionary definition a person’s art style is cultivated through a collection of the artist’s inspiration, skill set, skill level, personality and experiences- it is a ‘distinctive way only you paint’.
But this definition doesn’t stress the most important factor, that your art style is always evolving, changing, and adapting with you. I don’t think we should focus on finding our art style but instead focus on defining our artistic voice.
Defining your artistic voice
The first step to develop your unique art style is finding you artistic voice.
You need to ask yourself:
Why you paint?
What do what want to say through your art?
What do you want to communicate?
What message or meaning to you have behind your work?
For me, my work always needs to have a deeper meaning. I want to communicate something that is easier understood through an image rather than words. That my subject would have a bigger impact on the viewer if I painted the message rather than if I articulated it verbally.
So, ask yourself the question of why you create art?
Perhaps it’s a variety of things. You may paint to go, you find it therapeutic, you need to communicate, spread a message, change someone’s perspective, activate change, or convey certain feelings and emotions that can’t be put into words.
Perhaps you paint for fun or perhaps you paint with no meaning at all. However, art with no meaning is saying something isn’t; that art doesn’t need to have meaning. And that is meaningful!
It’s all well and good to dive into finding your art style, but what do want to say through your art style is the question we want to answer.
The answer that question will have a huge impact in what media, subject, and techniques you choose.
Consciously creating your art style
I think once you have ruminated on what direction you want your art to take, you can make steps into formulating your art style, through understanding what subjects, mediums, techniques will make up the composition of your work.
Subject
What subject do create in your art? Photorealism portraits, whimsical landscapes, abstract shapes, animations, sculptures…? What you want to your art to focus on – the subject of your attention- will dictate what medium, techniques, and composition you create.
Medium
What medium do you want to work in? What medium is going to lend itself to you to create specific elements that you need to convey your artistic voice.
Working in graphite will only allow you to work in black and white. Do you want to work large or small. Does the medium lend itself to be applied fast or slow, controlled, or free? For example, watercolour has freedom of movement. While oil lends the work to be more controlled. Perhaps a combination of media will allow for you achieve what you desire?
Technique
What media you use is going to follow on to what techniques you use? For example, you have alla prima techniques in oil and wet on wet in watercolour…rendering in your digital art, etc. The way you use specific techniques in your work is going to make them unique to you.
Composition
These three elements are intertwined, and all come in the composition of your artwork which is glue that puts it all together. All the parts in one coherent hole because we have a voice and a vision that we want to share with the world.
We give expression to our authenticity.
If you ask 12 people to paint or draw the exact same thing, you are going to get 12 completely different artworks. That is the crux of your style! What you want to paint, the medium, subject, technique and composition is going to shape your voice into a unique style.
You are going to need to experiment with many elements in your art. You’re going struggle and feel absolutely frustrated in your inability to stick with one style. You are inevitably going to expand your skill set as an artist of course your work and style in going to change!
Personally, I don’t think we should ever focus our energy on finding a strict art style that we should confine ourselves to, but instead find our artistic voice that we can change and adapt with each art piece and project we create.
Once we become fluent with being flexible in our art style, you open your potential as an artist and widen the possibility of projects and pieces that you can create- as we not always confined to a specific art style but instead are expressing our voice artistically.
Love you guys x
Chantal