Arty Business Ep.4: Style

Hellooo patrons and friends, artists and creators! Welcome to another episode of Arty Business with Ragonia! This episode we will be going over the eternal question of how to find your artistic STYLE!

I am especially excited to talk about this right now because: 

1. It is an extremely frequently asked question, for good reason! 

2. Last year was my first huge push in developing a style I could see myself in and feel proud of, and I worked very hard to get to where I am now. 

3. Where I am now is definitely ready for another push of development.

Some key examples of my personal style development from 2017 to 2019.

I think of artistic style as how you say what you want to say with your art. Style is also the sum of your influences and interests being interpreted into your art. Or, style is you creating in a way that represents your delightful uniqueness. 

The way I see it, we are spending our entirely lives collecting endless information about the world and storing it in our memories. Memories, music, emotions, materials, techniques, symbols, stylization, colors, shapes, patterns, on and on. And any moment that we sit down to try to represent something, we are drawing from this information whether we want to or not. 

Artists with unique and confident styles very consciously take pieces from a wide swath of the existing information, and expertly puts them back together to make something (almost) totally new.

That is to say, it can take a lot of work to find what you want to say and exactly how you want to say it with your unique voice. But it's work that you can do, and should!

This guide is a few techniques I've found to be helpful when I feel like I'm lost in the infinite world of artistic representation. If you're feeling like your art isn't "you", isn't improving, or is a carbon copy of the other artists you scroll through on Instagram, turn yourself into a student. A student of your own interests, goals, and influences.

This guide has a ton of journaling, sketching, and drawing exercises (yeaaah, fun homework!) that I have done and will continue to do to push my style and skill forward. I highly recommend keeping a special style exploration sketchbook that you can write down your thoughts, studies, and experiments! Get a sketchbook that you can get messy, scribble, sketch, and fail in. This is for YOU, not your socials!

That said, you're absolutely welcome to share any of your experiments, lists, thoughts, or Pinterest board links in the Community page here on Patreon! 

That's enough intro, let's dive in!

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A table runner that my parent's bought in Mexico before I was born, and a big influence on my artistic color palette.

S E L F  -  R E F L E C T I O N

+ What are you all about?  What do you LOVE? What makes your heart beat faster, what makes you jump up and down, makes you cry or laugh? What can you talk about for hours? Make a list in your sketchbook. (If you're anything like me doing this is guaranteed to fill you with joy.)

 + What kind of clothing/interior decor do you love? This can be a great indicator of COLOR SCHEMES (which I get asked about all the time), form, and general aesthetics. When I first got into illustration I was paying a lot of attention to Frannerd and Heikala, who both use a lot of pastel-y watercolor colors. Oops, as I result a lot of my earliest art was very pastel as well.

I went through a few months of feeling like my art was so not me, and I couldn't figure out why. When I started looking closer at my own favorite clothes and interior design pieces, I saw a lot of bright primary colors. Once I started applying my favorite color schemes to my art I felt so much more at home.

Take a look in your own closet, around your home, or at your dream pieces online. Notice any common colors, themes, or patterns? Put together a reference board, and/or write them down!

+ What do you spend your money on? Money is precious to a lot of us, so where you put your money can be an extra indicator about what’s important to you. Gifts for friends? Food? Travel trips? Pop culture collectibles? Plants?

+  + Let's do it! + +

 Make a new meet the artist drawing! But let's do it a little differently. Represent yourself in a way that really feels like you. Are you melancholy, funny, playful, reserved, aggressive, no-nonsense, romantic? How can you represent that? Draw yourself in an outfit that feels the most you right now, even if you don't own those clothes. 

Then! Instead of writing out the things that you love, do little illustrations to represent them! Perhaps incorporate some interior design elements or patterns that you love.

Then feel free to keep the drawing to yourself. Or share it on the Community page! If you're super proud of it and want to share it on Instagram or Twitter, we can use #ragoniapatron so we can enjoy each other's progress!

A few items that inspired me to merge illustration with functional objects.

Y O U R   M A R K E T

+ What’s your goal? Art is a huge field, and it’s super easy to get lost if you have absolutely no clue what you actually want to do within it. And usually ‘getting lost’ is following the first path that someone sets before you. Often people who don’t know much about illustration ask me if I do children’s books, not knowing that there’s an enormous range of other opportunities.

• Children’s Books
• Book Covers
• Editorial
• Comics
• Pattern Design
• Licensing
• Posters
• Portraiture
• Architectural
• Educational
• Housewares
• Lettering
• On and on!

Almost all artists do a variety of these sub-genres, but I think it can be helpful to focus your efforts on one or two.

When I first started with art, the two first illustration paths I saw were comics and children’s book illustration. Just because that’s what I saw, I dabbled in drawing comics and got a bagful of children’s books from the library. But after doing some reflection I found my real interest was in the combination of illustration and physical objects. Deciding on a goal clarified so many elements about my art, and continue to give me a sense of direction with what I create.

Do some research into the fields of art that you're most interested in. Is there one that rises above the rest for you? Are there elements of that kind of work that your art is lacking? Does your art style already fit in perfectly with a certain field?

+ How do you want to make people feel? Once you have an idea of your market, it can be helpful to try to pinpoint the emotions or reactions you’d like your art to illicit in a viewer. Or! Through what emotion/effect would you like to connect to your audience? Empower? Educate? Melancholy? Energy? Peace? Humor? Fear? 

Another way to look at this is what are your favorite people you follow doing on social media? Really try to pinpoint a few emotions or effects. Does you art employ any of these? If not, how can you incorporate them further?

Some market research notes I made in the spring of 2018!

+ Do a market study! I first heard this suggestion in Andy J. Pizza's awesome Creative Career Path podcast Series. Do some research on artists who are at the tops of the specific field you're pursuing. Gather reference images and take actual notes on what they make, and how they make it. What elements do you love about their art or find particularly successful? Can you find who their influences are or were?

+ + Let's do it! + +

Make some art that fits with your new (or reaffirmed) Art Market Goal. If you want to get into comics, make a full zine. If you want to be a fine artist, paint something BIG. If you want to be a portrait artist, make one for your friend. If you want to be an editorial illustrator, find a random article and make an illustration for it. Maybe illustrate a beer bottle label, redesign a cover for a book, design a pattern and then order it on some fabric. Don't just make a mock-up, actually try it!

Four big artistic influences from the first year of my career: 

(clockwise from top left) Lisa Congdon, Phoebe Wahl, Sophie McPike, and Molly Egan 

I N S P I R A T I O N

+ Who are your favorite artists? This is a lot of people’s first instinct when researching style, and it is of course very helpful! Gather inspiration pieces from your favorite artist in a folder and take a close look (...closer... closer!) at exactly what elements, techniques, symbols, colors, and materials they use. Write down a list to help you be very specific.

+ What are your favorite films, filmmakers, video games? Again, you can gather reference images and then get specific about what gets you jazzed about them. What makes them effective?

+ Who inspired your faves? Do some research (or just keep an eye/ear out) on who or what inspired your favorite artist/filmmaker/musician/person? 

A few more major inspirations from my first year:

(clockwise from top left) Mexican Otomi textile design, animation (shown is from Steven Universe), Midcentury Modern illustration (shown is by Mary Blair), and Memphis Design 

+ Where else can you find inspiration? There's a whole world out there, my friend! Every time I’m feeling stuck, my partner reminds me to look further back in time for inspiration, not just on Pinterest or Insta. Go to museums, conservatories, record shops, grocery stores, clothing stores, antique stores. Get a book on art history. Once you get in the habit of searching for inspiration and dissecting elements of the art around you, you will find new inspiration everywhere.

Again, sketch it out, write it down.

A master study I did in the spring of 2018, from this piece by Fran Meneses.

+ + Let's do it! + +

Do some studies, baby! Directly copying an artist’s work is an enormously helpful way to learn more about that artists technique, subject matter, everything. Set aside some time and give it a go, either replicating only elements, or an entire piece. Make notes of what you learn throughout the process. 

(I think this is part of what people love about the draw this in your style challenge on Instagram. It’s kind of a reminder to do studies on the way those artists do character design. )

Typically these studies should be used just for your personal development, not for sharing on social media. But of course, if you really must share your studies, ALWAYS tag and credit the artist clearly. 

A sampling of works that I feel were turning or pushing points in my artistic style and voice.

P R A C T I C E

+ Keep making! Obviously, you can think about what you want your style to be for a million years, but none of it means anything if you aren’t continuing to create. It’s only through the process of making, again and again, that we can find the techniques and subject matters that make our hearts sing. 

For most of the people that we see as having a very distinct ‘style’, they have been working hard for many years at finding something they enjoy and can see themselves in. 

Start putting in your time now, and remember that the process is part of the fun. 

Art Cycle graph by Shattered-Earth on deviantart.

+ How long will it take? I've gotten this question a few times. Once I really set in on finding a way of making art that I love, it took about 4 months of practicing and taking notes and studying and experimenting to get to my current ‘style’. I’m really thankful to myself for pushing that hard right when I started my career, but right about now I’m feeling like my art could use another period of growth and change. This is why I call art such an emotional roller coaster. You’ll never feel like you're ‘completely done’. But you can recognize the patterns and know that you’re always improving.

+ Are there any consistencies within your art? Do you like those patterns, techniques, or symbols that you see repeating in your work? Do you enjoy working with them? Can you see them fitting in well with your overall art career goal? See how it feels to consciously incorporate those elements into your art repeatedly.

+ Is there room for flexibility? Especially when we are early on in our art careers, it can be useful to allow yourself a little flexibility within your style. You might discover a totally new process or concept that you love. But! Be aware of where you put your energies as an artist. The more you work a certain way, the more people will expect that same style from you.

I like to think of it as what I put out is the kind of work I’m going to get back. Once you’re putting out a fairly consistent style, people will come to expect that of you. If you're making something in a way that you love, that's great! If you're doing something you really don't enjoy, then that's a bummer.

A clear example of style development between 2018 and 2019.

+ Is it possible to change your art style? Are you finding yourself in a rut of making art that you don’t really like? Go ahead and make a conscious switch. Don’t be surprised if you lose some of your audience that came to expect your older style. But a new audience will eventually come that appreciates your new direction. Make what you love, because that’s going to be where the consistency and joy comes from. Your art is going to be inconsistent if you’re unsure or don’t love the way you’re working. Be confident, be you.

+ Check back in regularly! I've mentioned this a couple of times earlier, but it will be completely natural and necessary to reassess your art style and technique regularly. Frequently this need will feel like art block or lack of motivation, but part of the issue may be that your old skills and tastes are no longer in line with your current tastes. Take the parts of the process that were most useful to you in the past and repeat.

+ + + Let's do it! + + +

Redraw an old piece! Often the improvements and changes in your art style and skill will be hard to discern yourself, especially if you're in one of those slump periods. A great way to see the progress you've made is to redraw an old piece of yours. It can be from two months ago, a year ago, or ten years ago!  Note what you like about the older piece, and enjoy seeing the progression you've made.

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R E S O U R C E S

• Creative Pep Talk episode partially on finding your style
• Also just listen to all of Creative Pep Talk 
• Frannerd's 2015 Video  The Amazing Journey of finding Our Own Illustration Style
• Frannerds 2019 Video Why my illustration style changed...
• Yoshi Yoshitani's Twitter thread  How to Draw What you Like
• Holly Exeley's video on Developing a Style 
• Lisa Congdon's Book 'Find Your Artistic Voice'

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I hope this answers the major questions you all have about style development, and gives some insight into my own recent process. I hope to someday in the future make one of those lovely videos where I dig even deeper through some of my oldest art that I can still find online (2007 DeviantArt anyone?)

In fact, since I didn't dig that far back, how about a little bonus? Possibly my first "Redraw", that pretty plainly shows my anime AND fantasy roots:

According to my DeviantArt page, the bottom characters I drew in 2006 and the top was from 2007.

As I said, I am sorely in need of some artistic improvement at this point in the year, and I absolutely will be going through these steps in the next few weeks. I'll do my best to share as much of my practices and results with you all here on Patreon!

If you do any of the exercises or steps and have any fun results to share I (and the other Patrons I'm sure!) would be overjoyed to see them! The Community page on here would be a great place to share that, and if you share on Instagram use #ragoniapatron so we can see that too! 

But of course if you'd like to keep it to yourself, that's awesome as well. Some art is just for you, and that's rad.

As always, please let me know if this brings up any other questions! It's a complex process, but absolutely worth it to have the feeling of yes, this is me in art form. Even if that feeling only lasts a couple of months. Such is the life on an artist!

And thank you all so so so so much for supporting me and this Patreon! I am absolutely overjoyed that so many people are connecting with the Arty Business series, and I hope it finds many more people in the future. You inspire me so much, you motivate me, and you give me the sense of community that is sometimes hard to find as an artist.

xoxo,

Ragon