How to Find Your Artistic Style

On several occasions, I have been asked how you work out your style as an artist? This is particularly hard when you are just starting out but to be honest there is no formula or no right or wrong answer to working out your artistic style.

You might be reading this and think, why is it so important to have a style? Well, there are several reasons why it is important to find your artistic style:

• If your style is all over the place you won’t be able to target a specific market.
• When you spend time focusing on one style you can develop your skills much faster.
• If you are creating all different styles of artwork you will end up spending a fortune on art supplies.
• When you haven’t defined your style, it makes it hard to:

• Get recognized for your work
• Develop a brand strategy
• Reach your audience with impact
• Build fans/followers
• Make your social media work for you
• Create a collection of products

Now, developing your own style doesn’t mean you have to stick to one medium, subject matter or color palette but it does mean that you will tend to focus more on specific mediums, subjects and color palettes instead of dabbling in everything.

It’s not easy to establish your artistic style especially when starting out as you are practising and experimenting and trying to discover what mediums you like and what subject matter you like to paint. As creative people we tend to be inspired by a lot of things and go off in all different directions. I understand. I have the same problem.

What is artistic style?

Artistic style is what makes your artwork yours. It’s what makes you stand out from other artists and what people associate with you.

Look at the masters such as Andy Warhol, Rembrandt, Monet and Picasso. When you look at their collection of artworks can you see a style or theme developing with each piece? They might have different subject matters in each piece, but the style of work is consistent throughout each piece. This is the artists style.

You can look at a painting by Picasso and know it’s a Picasso because of his bold shapes and cubist style just the same way as you can look at a particular vase of sunflowers and know it’s a Van Gogh. They have developed their own signature style that to this day is still recognisable.

Your artistic style might come about from your life experiences. As you mature you develop your own voice and personality, and this can be impacted by the world around you. What you painted when you were is high school might be very different to the artworks you are producing now. With every life experience you grow as a person just like with every artwork you create your style changes and develops. Just like your personality your art style can mature and develop.

It can be very hard to work out your unique style and you may be confused as to what your style is. That is totally normal. You might just paint the things you like without giving much thought to the style or technique. Try laying all your artworks out and see if you can see some consistency.

• Do you paint the same subject matter?
• Do you use the same medium?
• Do you use a particular brush stroke?

There is no right or wrong way to establish your artistic style. Some artists stumble across theirs quite quickly while others need a bit more time to fine tune theirs.

Artists can spend years developing their style and techniques to create a style that is uniquely theirs. I don’t want this to scare you away from your creative journey, so I have created a quiz to fast track this process to determining your style.

The quiz will help you to get to know yourself as an artist and where you are at right now with your style. Once you have taken the quiz, refer to the workbook to work out your secondary style language and use the workbook questions to help you refine even further your own specific unique style, focus and have a go at creating your artist statement. 

Artist statements are great for including on your website and any promotional material you have.

Tracy xx