What is an artistic style?
Your artistic style is what makes your work yours. It’s what makes a Lowry or a Pollock or an O’Keefe instantly recognisable: the individual use of subjects, colours, forms, textures and space that create a unique whole. There are great commercial advantages to having a signature style; however, it’s about more than that. It’s your individual artistic style that gives your work integrity.
All artists have a natural tendency to head in a certain direction, whether it’s meticulous observational drawing or sweeping abstract landscapes. Finding your artistic style is about following your talents, interests and instincts. It isn’t always easy.
Renowned portrait painter Jonathan Yeo is open about the struggles new artists can have while establishing their own style in his BBC Maestro course. If you’re starting out in an established field, like portraiture, there’s the challenge of “cliché avoidance”. This can create a real feeling of “pressure to find a style which is distinctive” – not easy, especially in a crowded field.
If you love art and have time to play around with techniques and ideas, there’s plenty you can do to start developing your own artistic style.
How to develop an art style
If you’re just starting out as an artist or are further along your journey and wondering how to change your art style, here are some helpful tips you can follow.
1. Be prolific
The best way to discover which styles work for you is simply to keep creating. What do you enjoy? Which media seems to suit you the best? What materials do you like using? Take inspiration from anywhere and everywhere and explore subjects from portraiture to abstract. If you’re at art school, you’ll be doing this anyway, but don’t just stick to the syllabus. Also, don’t feel you have to persevere with a style or technique that you find dull or stressful – your artistic style needs to bring you joy.
2. Look at a lot of art
At the same time, become familiar with others’ styles. Immerse yourself in a world of artistic styles by visiting galleries and exhibitions. Spend time in the art history section of the library leafing through the art monographs. Watch documentaries and read interviews with other artists, or even join an art class if you’re not already studying. Which styles speak to you?
3. Narrow your focus
After this onslaught of art, you’ll probably feel ready to refine your influences. Choose a handful of artists whose work and style you admire. Practise working with these styles: what do you feel comfortable with? What challenges you as an artist? Does it feel like a natural fit for your own skills and talents?
4. Experiment
You’ve played around with different styles – now it’s time to experiment with them. Portrait artist Jonathan Yeo is a big believer in experimentation and explains that even when it doesn’t work, there’s still value in playing with ideas. Experimentation, according to Jonathan, is “always going to be a very useful and often surprising way of discovering new things.”
He gives an example of how experimenting can work successfully. He was taken by how some of his early-stage portraits had a collage-like feel to them, which led him to produce some actual collages. This experiment was “more complex than I thought”, but created a body of work that was new, different and challenging.
5. Embrace serendipity
When you’re experimenting, you might stumble across unexpected styles or techniques – go with them, and see where they take you. Jonathan Yeo describes how when he was starting out, he had to save money by reusing canvases – and discovered that he liked the way this added different aspects to the background. This has evolved into his distinctive style of portraiture:
“The more highly finished the faces, the more important it is to me to leave some bits abstract or a bit wrong, because it stops you getting too comfortable when you look at it.”
6. Follow your interests
Look for inspiration from beyond the art world. If you love swimming, horses, people-watching, architecture or trees – use these as inspiration. If you follow your interests and passions, you can easily find joy in your art. The world around you and the things you love in it will always be a wonderful source of inspiration. As Jonathan Yeo says, “Be open to ideas from unexpected places.”
Jonathan describes himself as a “bit of a geek” who has a “fascination with new technologies”. He’s recently introduced various forms of digital capturing into his work, from 3D scanners to artificial intelligence. You don’t have to stick to art galleries to find subjects that fire your imagination.
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