How Do You Find Your Art Style?

What can an artist do to find your art style?

Why are you painting? The purpose of your artwork will affect the style. Explore some typical types of art.

What art do you like and why do you like it? How do we translate this to developing our own individual style? Can we do anything to speed up the process?

Get the practical advice on finding and developing your personal painting style.

Your style is inside of you.

Your style is inside of you.

How Do Your Find Your Art Style?

Where Is Your Art Style?

Your art is inside of you. We all have an innate knowledge of what's pleasing and what looks good. It's our inner artistic voice, our personal art style.

You just have to find it, nourish it, encourage it and set it free.

The key is to turn off all the distractions, turn off negative voices, turn off what other people saying, and listen to our inner artist.

The Purpose of Your Artwork

Why do we paint? Our art style can depend on the reasons we are painting.

Ask yourself - Why do you want to paint? What do you expect to get out of painting? What will you do with your paintings? 

We may plan on giving them to family and friends, sell them or use them to decorate our home. There are various options.

Basically artists paint for three different reasons:

Paint what you enjoy.

• Ourself - We paint for self fulfillment. We may want to express the things we enjoy or dislike - children, animals, cars, flowers, farm life, city life, political events, changing seasons, to record history - the list goes on.
• Art Shows - Show artwork has to be impressive. It has to catch the attention of people and the judges. It usually is large. It needs something unusual or different - like pink rocks.
• Sales - We may be painting to fatten our wallet.  Public opinion will probably govern our style. We will keep up on the current trends, colors, and themes. We get our paintings into galleries, on-line or other sales avenues.

We may paint for one or more of these reasons - possibly all three. There's no right or wrong to this answer.

It's just helping us understand ourselves as an artist.

Typical Art Styles

Experimenting with different painting styles is part of finding our personal style.

Trying different types of paintings expands our horizons and we can discover new ways to express ourselves.

There are so many different art styles. Here are just a few examples.

Impressionism

Realism Painting

Abstract Art

Impressionism emphasizes light and color, instead of realistic details. The impressionist often uses bold brushwork to create vibrant and dynamic paintings.

Realism depicts subjects as they are in real life. It takes sharp observation, technical skills a lot of time and patience. It's a challenge, but it can be very rewarding.

Abstract art works with shapes, colors, and forms, that may or may not represent real-life subjects. It conveys emotions and ideas rather than discernible objects.

What Do You Enjoy?

Identify your favorite types of artwork: visit galleries, look on-line, social media, and in books. 

What artwork do you enjoy?

• What do you admire in the artwork of others?
• What do you like in your own artwork. What do you enjoy painting?
• What do you paint regularly? Do you find yourself painting certain subjects, colors, repeating compositions or techniques? 

Answering these questions is the jumping off point of identifying your individual style.

The 1-2-3 of Finding Your Art Style

The real artist is inside of you. Keep tuning into your art heart!

1. Understand the fundamentals (color, composition, and values).
2. Practice what you admire and enjoy.
3. Don't be afraid to experiment.

The more you paint, the more you'll see your gift emerging - your individual style.

Keep practicing your painting skills.

1. Know the Fundamentals

Successful paintings are built on composition, color, and values. It's vital to have a working knowledge of the fundamentals.

When you understand something, you can bend and flex it, add to it or subtract, expand or condense it. - Change it into your own personal style.

Check your paintings for color, composition and values.

2. Do a Series of Paintings

Look at the artwork you admire (yours and others). Ask yourself what impressed you about the painting. Choose one thing you like the most.

• Was did you admire - the colors, values, composition, brushwork, etc? 
• Are you able to replicate it? Not the entire painting - just the one thing that impressed you the most.
• Choose your own subject and practice the thing that impressed you. 
• See what you can do with it in a series of several paintings. 

You will see your style emerging, as you continue painting what you admire.

3. Experiment

Don't be afraid to experiment. Art is freedom when we allow it to be.

Set your inner artist free!

You did a series of painting to get a grasp on one thing you admired in paintings.

What did you like  - the color mood, an exciting composition, value contrast, whatever?

• Now, take that one thing and listening to your inner artist's heart and experiment.
• See what can you do with it by adjusting, bending, moving, changing it - making it part your individual art style. 
• Do you still like it? Is it worth incorporating into your future paintings?

You're finding what suits you. Don't try to force yourself into a certain type of painting. Let it find you, as you continue painting and listening to you inner art voice your style will emerge. 

Your art style is in you - it's a part of you (your inner art voice) - just listen to it and set it free.

It's as individual as you and uniquely yours.

Enjoy - and Keep Painting!