I have a fear that my art is without style. I’m not speaking about art in a fashion sense, either. I don’t mean that my style is questionable or bad, I mean that my work exhibits an absence of style. I get the impression that many of this awesome community struggle with this, too.
Ever since I was little I felt like I was doing something wrong when I made art. It seemed like everyone else knew a secret that guided them in their artistic discovery. I’d watch my friends create beautiful artworks and immediately see their unique mark-making and style. I’d look at my art and see a void; where was my style?
When I decided to become an art teacher I realized I had to guide my students in this same journey. I wasn’t the only person to feel this way. Many of us feel vulnerable about creation, even if we’ve been making for years, students of all ages express concern over discovering and developing artistic style.
Today let’s discuss 3 important elements to discover and develop artistic style.
Keep It Simple
I remember taking AP Art and being told by my art teacher to find a theme or thread for my artwork. He suggested that if I did, I would likely earn a higher grade. I spent so much time thinking about a “good theme” that I did not create much art. I didn’t do well on the exam. One of those reasons for not scoring as well as I could have is I complicated things.
Work that is created by the same person will exhibit connections to previous artworks. Because we have unique interests and ideas, those will express themselves in our art. Today, as an art educator and examiner for the IB, I can tell you too many students over-complicate their ideas. (Phew, it’s not just me!) They spend too much time in their heads on ideation and too little on execution, which leads me to our next point:
Make Art, Make Lots and Lots of Art
The research I’ve found online all tells me to do one thing: create art. This is one reason I love reading about Crystal Moody’s work. She openly discusses creative process and her habit of creating art every day. We can watch as she discovers and learns about her own artistic style. It’s also how we can also discover our own.
Creating a series of art, like Moody has with her Fursday paintings, is a great way to engage with her audience and collectors. By doing so, Moody (and the rest of us) can learn about color, qualities of mark making and ultimately which topics keep our interest. But we can’t learn about these things unless we put paintbrush to canvas! It’s by creating our artwork that we discover our own interests, which lead us to artistic style and voice.
You Aren’t Stuck with One Style for Life
Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh courtesy Wikimedia; This is the style many of us recognize van Gogh for, but have you seen some of his earlier paintings?! Perhaps you should look them up 🙂
I had an animated conversation with one of our lovely community members who felt frustrated that she would be beholden to one artistic style, forever, in order to make money and be shown in galleries. I tried to explain that this just isn’t true! Look at work by Picasso and you will see his work evolved over time.
Other artists with evolving styles include: van Gogh, Degas and contemporary Chuck Close. These artists have specific styles that come to mind when we think of them. But, if you dig a little deeper into their history, you’d see they investigate different approaches to their art over time. They didn’t feel beholden to one style; they investigated new and different ideas over time.
We aren’t beholden to one style. But, we certainly won’t learn about our art and style unless we investigate an idea beyond a single artwork. By the virtue of doing our own work, and going through our own visual investigation and discovery, we will create works that reflect an overarching style and quality. It’s how we grow in skill and how we grow as artists (and human beings!).
I’m a pragmatic person. I enjoy efficiency, systems, and recipes. Give me directions and a system for doing something and I’m all over it. Tell me something is without a system and I create one for it. There is a system for developing artistic style: it involves commitment to one’s art, many stops and starts along the way, and continued skill development. The system has bumps built into the road because that’s the only path to artistic style. We grow, we learn, we incorporate new ideas into our art, and we begin again.
For a while I grew tired of my self-portrait investigations so I began to look at unique point of views for landscapes. A lot of my work still exhibits the semi-sculptural painting you can see in some of the flowers here.
My work has evolved over the years but you can observe my artwork and see my paintings and drawings share certain qualities. I’d investigate color for a certain time, or layering paint with plaster, and then once I felt I figured it out, I moved on to something new. Today my recent work has been all about being color and capturing moments of travel.
When you place certain artworks of these different time periods together they look drastically different. And yet, if you look closely, you can see shared qualities: certain marks I make with my brush, the sculptural weight I often give to objects in my works, for example. My ideas progress as I do. My artwork grows as I grow and learn. That knowledge helps my fear abate and opens the door for me to create.
There is a big secret to developing and understanding artistic style. It includes the above qualities, but there is one more special ingredient: it’s you. We are unique individuals with our own combination of personality traits, interests and ideas. It is only by creating that you discover your style because only YOU can create your art.
BE COURAGEOUSLY CREATIVE: Describe your journey to an artistic style in the comments below. Do you have a distinct style? How did you find it? Or are you still looking? I want to know! Tell me about it in the comments below.
Thanks for this article. I have the same feeling about style. I don’t like to be charactized as an identifiable artist. I work in many ways, love to experiment and try different materials. Why do most artists and instructors think you have to do the same type art all the time? Boring! I actually try to do something entirely different constantly to grow as an artist. I do teach art classes and we do talk about style, but I think you have to try many things to know what each can do.
Thank you for reading Bj I’m glad to have your contribution to Artist Think. You are right, we don’t have to have the same exact style, but by the virtue of being unique individuals, all of our work will have a common thread. It’s a series work, however, that will show collectors we are capable of consistent creative practice and that we can follow an idea through to fruition. But, once that investigation comes to a close, it’s a great opportunity to try something new 🙂 I love your quote “you have to try many things to know what each can do…” I’m pretty confident all the artists we identify as successful have also experimented a lot!
I’m keeping it simple and creating lots, but the only cohesiveness I can see myself is that the paintings are pretty soft and that I’m not going for photorealism. The drawings are more detailed that the paintings.
You have a consistent theme and investigation as part of your line of visual investigation too!
Thanks 🙂 It’s hard for me to describe what I draw and paint and my style in less than a minute though 🙂
Thanks okay Linda. It’s good practice to figure out how to say it swiftly because that’s how you can connect with potential customers/collectors too!
Yes, but very hard when you have such a diverse production
Yes. So, if you really want to sell, create in batches and then have a series to share. And then have another series. 🙂 I have one focused series I work on and another artwork that is my break and distraction from the series. When my series is finished, I start a series based on the “taking a break” artwork…
I’ve started working in series. So it’s on the way 🙂
Woohoo! 🙂
I’ve been wondering about this myself for the past while. I even asked people if they thought I had a “style” because I felt like I was all over the place. I was told I do but no one could actually identify it. Perhaps it’s what you say….it’s more a common thread in the different things I do which vary radically from abstract, surrealism and digital art to collages and textile pieces. I don’t really think of myself as an artist (more of a wannabe artist) because I don’t have an obvious “style”. But I find I get bored focussing on one thing all the time. I’ll come up with an idea, run with it for about six pieces and then get bored and move on to something else. It always intrigues and amazes me that some people can create hundreds ~ and even thousands of pieces….Toller Cranston painted over 70,000 paintings! and he definitely had a distinct style.
Anyway, I am glad to see I’m not alone and it’s ok. Personally I kind of like exploring lots of different styles anyway….never was one to fit myself into a box.
Lindsey,
Have you considered asking some peers about your work? Other artists (versus friends or loved ones) may be able to reflect on and identify the characteristics of your work. I don’t believe the medium matters, so many contemporary artists do not stick to one medium, it is their conceptual investigation that is their common thread. It is important for artists to understand that connection and thread if they wish to show in galleries or sell their work. It’s being able to share that story that can draw in collectors and build trust.
If you create, you are an artist Lindsey. I encourage you to consider what you think “real” artists do and why you keep yourself separate from that categorization.
I have exactly the same struggle about my style, still somehow undefinied. Recently I started to upload my old works on instagram and I was suprise how many similarities I can see in old works and new ones. It is me and my creation and that is the most important. As you wrote the same marks of brush in suprising moments.
Thank you for your articles, I really enjoy reading them and always find something for me <3.
Greetings from Poland :)!
Magda I’m so pleased you enjoy Artist Think, I’m grateful for your readership. Having space from our work can be a great way to step back and gain perspective about our style and artistic voice. Thanks for being here!
It’s taken years for me to gradually find my style – or as I prefer to call it – my unique creative voice. I’m close but it’s still evolving. Occasionally I break out but the colours and shapes are there even if the subject and format are different.
I use to worry about it a lot but gradually I realised that it is not something you can – or should – try to force. Then it becomes a mannerism rather than true expression.
I think you’re right, Carrie – make art, lots of art. But also, at least at the beginning, experiment wildly. It’s ok to be all over the place if we don’t really know where we want to be. One day, we know and we go there. Until then, we’re just forcing the issue unnecessarily because of societal pressure to be seen to ‘arrive’.
Hi Cherry! 🙂 Some artists seem to feel something is wrong with their work if they don’t see their own voice in it. But as you say, art continues to evolve, as we do! I love your advice to experiment wildly, we need more of that and that’s something many people have fear around. Wild experimentation could lead to real insight. Thank you so much for sharing. 🙂