What is Style?
One of the most common questions from budding artists that I see across the interwebs is some iteration of "How do I develop my own style?" People seem to be frustrated when they don't recognise their style in their own work. It can be difficult for you to see your own style, because you're intimately familiar with it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Style appears to be seen as some ethereal beast that people are chasing with their butterfly nets, in the hope that when they have found 'their style' their work will magically improve. This is all backwards and upside down.
Style doesn't just appear, it's innate. It's like handwriting. It's made up from your choices, your tastes, the things you like or dislike, your background, your preferred subjects, and many other things. Like handwriting, it can be directed - but even if you never direct it, it's still your style.
I believe style is made of many things, such as:
1) Your art background, the things that interest you, the practice put in, what you've learned. If you spent a lot of time studying the flow of line in figure drawing, your style will naturally reflect that. If you spent time studying lost edges, your style will reflect that. If you spent a lot of time on colour theory, your style will reflect that.
2) The artists you admire. When we look at art we admire, we tend to know what we like about it and incorporate it into our own work. I love the way Malcolm Liepke's paintings look so juicy, wet, and luscious. I love the distorted, exaggerated shapes and angles of figures by Egon Schiele and Doris Schmitz. I love the vulnerability of Alexander Tinei's figures. I love the brazen, earthy nature of the erotic paintings of Alfonso Del Moral and Cornelius McCarthy. These are all things I want to see in my own work.
3) The colours you choose. Bright, muted, soft, harsh, limited, complementary, saturated, monochrome; there's more on this in my article How to Choose Your Palette, but your colours are part of your style, and doubly so when those colours are chosen carefully or intuitively.
4) The application of pigment. Thick and bold, neat and tidy, scratchy and jagged, flowing and smooth; whatever medium you're using you're still using your hand, your muscles, the tools you've chosen, and the way you apply pigment is part of your style.
5) Your brain and body. Some people get bored working on the same thing over multiple sessions, so tend to finish paintings alla-prima in one sitting. Some people love the focus that working on a long term project provides, and might love that this allows them to create lots of tiny detail in a single painting. Some people get obsessed with an idea and work in series, creating multiple paintings of the same idea to explore it thoroughly (totally looking at myself, there!). Some people have physical limitations that affects their work, and have come up with clever ways around it. All of this funnels right into your style; your OCD, your arthritus, your ADHD, your ME, your colour-blindness.
