Defining Your Art Style: Five Questions to Ask Yourself
Style is perhaps one of the most important and most elusive aspects of an artist’s portfolio. Illustrators find clients based on a match between customer and artist, galleries choose artists to represent based on what fits their energy, and fans find us all on social media based on something catching their eye in the endless feed of internet content. But how do you define and refine your art style?
What is Artistic Style?
It can be challenging to pin down a singular definition of art style. Artistic style is how an artist makes their work look, using things like colours, shapes, lines, and textures. It’s the unique way they choose to show ideas or tell stories, like how everyone has their own handwriting or fashion sense. It also includes the types of stories and subject matter they represent in their work. Some styles are realistic and detailed, while others are simple, abstract, or playful.
A key aspect of my art style is digital art with stylized characters, often monsters, demons or aliens!
Five Questions to Ask Yourself to Determine Your Style
How do I use colour and value in my work? Colour and value are aspects of art style you glean immediately, even if you are squinting or passing by quickly. These two important features, therefore, can become a way to define your style.
What audience do I want to primarily view my work? The more specific you can be with the answer to this question, the better. For example, if you want to illustrate children’s picture books, you might need to consider cartoony characters, bright colours, and simplified shapes in your style. If you want to be a superhero comic artist, you will need to work on action poses, exaggerated human proportions, and matching the style of a publishing house.
What are my favourite subjects to include? I personally like drawing human/humanoid figures best, so I make sure my portfolio is full of characters and work on anatomy and dynamic posing. Perhaps you prefer nature scenes with details specific to local places, so researching accurate flora and fauna may be important. Think of shapes, colours and emotions you gravitate towards! Find your favourites and lean into a portfolio representing a well-rounded demonstration of the subject matter you love.
What tools do I use to create my work? Certain materials have intrinsic elements to them that lend themselves to style. For example, watercolour is often translucent, whereas gouache is opaque. You can usually see directional marks when working with coloured pencils, whereas digital art can be completely smooth. Focus on the strengths of your chosen materials, and make sure to highlight them in your work.
What would you create if you had no audience, no need to earn money, and no external pressures? I wish this were not hypothetical! Of course, we all have concerns about our art's marketability and audience, and you should not dismiss them outright. But in a perfect world, what would you be excited and passionate about creating? If there is a way you can incorporate parts of that into even your client work, your energy is sure to shine through each piece.
Why Is Defining Your Style Important?
Understanding your own art style will let you focus on both the strengths and weaknesses of your current portfolio. It can be tempting to try and use all the art materials or draw all the subject matter in the world, but we only have so much time and energy to devote to building a portfolio. Focusing on the most important things will allow your style to grow stronger as you build up key foundational skills and lean into creating art you are excited about and skilled at making.
