If you’re into art or a part of an artist community, you’ll probably see this topic brought up a lot.
Whether this art form is physical, like painting and sculpting, or intangible like music, I think generally speaking, all artists want to be recognized for having their own style. It’s similar to your signature. You want it to be unique. If someone can look at an art piece and immediately associate that with you, I would think that’s when you’ve started to develop a style. Just emphasizing that I wrote “started”. I don’t think any artist says, “this is my style and I’m going to stick to it.” I would believe most artists will continue to develop new skills, so that their style continues to grow and evolve, while still carrying the identifier that screams it’s made by you.
I’ve been drawing for a while now, and I still don’t know what it really feels to have a style. I’m constantly looking at other artists’ pieces and thinking about how I wish I could do whatever they’re doing. I eventually just mimic what they’ve drawn in essence. I’m not copying what they’re doing like it’s a study. I just want to take the style they developed and see if I can try it out myself on subjects that I like drawing. At this phase in my life, I don’t have a style. I can draw by mixing and mashing one or two styles but it’s recognizable if I told you who I based any of my drawings on. I consider most things I draw a poor imitation, if anything.
My idea of an art style, is when you’ve taken and muddled all of the artists that you’ve been inspired by, and twisted it to make it look like it’s something completely new. I wouldn’t consider someone a plagiarizer if they took inspiration from 100s if not 1000s of people. At that point it should be considered your own. I’m in that process of observing other people’s art, wondering how they made it look the way they did. I then come up with exercises that pertain to a strength that I’ve identified the artist utilizes. What is that strength? It could be a bunch of things:
- Gesture/motion
- Color
- Composition
- Values
- Mood/atmosphere
The list can go to infinity, but this is what I would consider the fun part. When you’ve identified a skillset that you want to learn, and coming up with a “lesson plan” for it. An interesting exercise that I was recently made of aware of, was to draw something without any references. What you end up with is your style. Simple… Although I would say this is applicable only to people that have the basics down. I have a hard time calling something a style if… let’s say someone drew a portrait. If the portrait has poor anatomy, then I would hesitate to call that a style because that’s just a byproduct of your own lack of knowledge on that subject matter. But the fact that you produced whatever you produced is a step forward in the right direction.
I don’t ever plan on being a “professional artist”. I just enjoy art, and letting the hobby guide my development. I try to have fun with the process and one day maybe I’ll be satisfied with the speed and quality of the things I draw, enough to call myself an artist.