The art style is learned and nurtured over time. Sometimes, your signature style might come off by accident. But more often than not, you develop it on purpose. Art style can also happen both ways. It all depends on the trigger.
So, what exactly is an art style? The art style is a combination of a lot of things that make your art a masterpiece. Emotions, tone, technique, colors, medium among other things all come into play. This is what gives your art a signature. Your sense of touch as an artist. A unique touch and masterpiece.
It is possible to be intentional in developing your art style. But how is that possible? If you are still struggling to have that signature style as an artist, read on to find out how you can go about it.
7 Tips to Find Your Art Style
1. Prioritize and Stay Consistent
Consistency is the key factor to achieving anything. That includes developing your art style. Someone said that it takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 days to make it a style. We couldn’t agree more. Art is an artist’s lifestyle expressed through pictures, paintings, carvings, pottery, drawing among other things.
Set your artistic goals and prioritize them. Write them on a vision board. Identify a style that best suits you and be consistent in perfecting it. Work on it every other day for weeks, months, and years. You will be surprised at how easy it becomes a part of your creativity.
2. Look for Inspiration in odd places and things
The best part of being an artist is that you can easily be inspired by anything. While talented artists get inspiration from nature and use them to create fresh arts, other artists tend to rely on others’ work. Which is not a bad thing at all. For as long as it sets you off, go for it.
Artists are motivated by just about anything. But not all days are full of motivations and fresh ideas to work on. Sometimes, burnout sets in, and you just can’t think. What do you do to an art that is halfway done? Shelve it away? Definitely not! Take a break from everything and anything that distracts you and spend some quiet moments alone.
3. Copy an Artist You Like
Here, we are not talking about photocopying another artist’s entire idea. Far from it. Study their work keenly and borrow the most important elements to add to your ideas. Make it seamless and as fresh otherwise, you will come off as a copycat.
Steal from artists. The Greatest of All Times. That is what most successful artists do. Stealing style elements from every corner and piecing them together. In fact, as you study other artists’ work, you will be surprised at how you start developing fresh styles and ideas.
4. Mimic the nurture
If you copied the world around you, nobody would sue you for copyright. Go for vacations or watch the sunset and observe the light, colors, shapes among other things. Put all that into your art and you will never be sued for anything.
Besides that, don’t forget to work on your technical skills regularly. This will open doors for new perspectives and styles you might have otherwise missed. When you are an artist, you cannot afford to miss any detail. Even the smallest. And every artist’s workstation is a hallowed ground where no Tom, Dick, and Harry should step on.
5. Design Inspiration/Vision Board
These are bits and pieces of things that inspire you.
Write them on your vision board and refer to them when working on a related piece of art. It could be places, things, and even works of other artists. Let them be random and don’t ignore the pettiest ideas that come to you. That is what is going to give you that signature style.
Before setting to work, analyze your vision board and try to internalize all of them. You will be surprised at how a masterpiece jumps into place. That is how you get started on a new piece and finish the ones you had shelved away. That is how you give your art a personal touch!
6. Love Writing
Even if you are not a gifted writer, start writing. You will be surprised at how much writing will help you to discover yourself deeper as an artist. Writing also makes you more productive and reflective about everything you are working on.
Writing is also one of the best ways to vent and declutter your brain. A cluttered mind will slow you down and eventually cause you a brain clog. You can’t think, you can’t work. However, when you write, it is like you are downloading some parts of your brain to create more memory space. So much for a brain dump!
7. Practice, Practice, and Practice
That is the rule of the game. Practice as much as you can and push yourself beyond the limit. Just imagine yourself having a limited time to lose some weight to win a coveted prize. What do you do? You exercise until your body can’t respond. You become more disciplined with your diet and daily routine. You push yourself so much and you only stop at the elastic limit.
The same goes for developing your style as an artist. Have some discipline and practice on new styles. Create new things as often as you can because this is the only way you can see progress. Ensure that you have done something new and challenging every other day. Even if you have to drag your feet to do it, do exactly that!
Final Thoughts
Having a style that is unique to you as an artist is such a great achievement. It is what people will remember you for. Take for example Michelangelo the world’s greatest of all times painter and sculptor, He had something unique for his cursive style and he maintained that all through his work. We can now identify his original works through a few details and styles he used over the years.
