I find it hard to tell my own style. I look at my art and I know what I was trying to do, or what my reference looked like. I can imagine what other favorite artists would have done with the piece. My own work looks like a bad version of what I was trying to do, and I find it hard to appreciate what I did that was uniquely me (in a good way).
That’s why art challenges like “Paint Your Style” can be intimidating. Do I have a style? Am I painting my style now? How do I know??
Here are some techniques I have used to get closer to identifying my style.
Techniques to Find Your Art Style
Take a class or join a group with other artists.
Whenever I take a class with other students – even beginners – I feel immediately that the other students all have a unique personal style. Even if they, like me, insist they don’t have one. As long as the class is small enough and long-term enough to get to know people, I feel confident that if I put all the other students’ work in a line, I could tell whose piece was whose. I kind of feel like a style is like an accent: you can only tell somebody else’s.
Your style may be comprised of all sorts of things you don’t normally think about like the way you hold your tools, the colors your gravitate toward, your choice of topics and references, your choice of artists and genres to imitate or learn from. You may say “This isn’t my style, I just took a class and learned from the teacher,” but you chose which class to take; you picked your mentors. Your interests and attention guided which lessons you took to heart and which you ignored. Your work isn’t the same as the other students’ work. You don’t make exact copies of the teacher’s paintings. You may wish you did, but it’s wonderful that you don’t.
If you only surround yourself with the work of your idols, it’s easy to start to think “Real artists have a style, and I don’t.” Joining into community with other hobbyists/beginners/strivers who have the same insecurities may remind you that (1) you’re not alone and (2) yes, we have styles too!
Try to imitate other styles.
When I do tutorials from artists I admire, and sometimes when I make Artist Palette Profiles, I create work in the style of that artist. Challenges like the “20 Style Challenge” invite you to make art of the same subject 20 times in different styles. While exercises like this, by definition, get you out of your own style, it can be helpful to:
- Observe what makes up a style; what is it that makes this look like so-and-so’s work? What are the key features?
- Notice your own response to different styles: what aspects of this style are you drawn to? What do you not like?
- Discover the edges of your own style in its absence: what did you do differently from normal?
- Look for ways that your own style crept in anyway, even though you were trying to avoid it! In what ways does your work still look like your own even though you were trying to make it more like theirs? (Other than it being less skilled, I mean!) Are there things you like about your work better than theirs?
You also may note things that you want to keep doing! For example, if you admire an artists’ use of a particular color, you may decide you want to keep using it. Adopting bits of other peoples’ style into your own is perfectly legitimate way to craft your style, magpie-like. It won’t end up being a copy of someone else: it will be a copy of everyone you like, in various tiny ways.
Write your (future) mission statement.
Imagine it’s 5-10 years in the future and you have been doing art the whole time and gotten really good. You definitely have a style by now. You are now holding an exhibition, teaching a class, applying for an art residency in an amazing location, or whatever your loftiest artistic goal is. You need to write your artists’ statement. What does it say?
Here are some prompts. You don’t need to have an answer for all of them. Pick a few that you can answer easily. You may answer about your work to date, and/or your imagined, future, ideal body of work.
- What mediums do you use and how long have you been working with them?
- What are the common themes, ideas, topics, or subjects in your work?
- Who are your influences? (Consider: artists you follow; historical art movements; people in your life; art and cultural influences that are not directly in the same artistic genre/sphere.)
- When and where do you feel the most inspired?
- What kinds of feelings do you want to evoke with your art? (What kind of feelings do you want to feel with your art?)
- Is there something you want to convince people of? What is your message?
- Is there a problem or tension you are trying to resolve? What do you struggle with?
- What is your process? How do you prefer to make your work? What steps or tasks do you find most important or enjoyable?
- What would it help to know about you to understand your art?
For example, here is mine.
I have been painting with watercolor and gouache and blogging about art since 2021. My practice includes deep, meditative observation through simple practices such as color swatching, thumbnails, and nature journaling. Inspired by artist-naturalists such as Claire Giordano, Maria Coryell-Martin, and John Muir Laws, my aim is to empower myself and others to connect with nature through beginner-friendly artistic explorations.
Billy Idyll
Don’t.
Here is the section where I tell myself what I need to hear.
Your art style is just the way you make art. By definition, anything you do is your style because you did it. So don’t sweat it!
Art challenges like “Paint Your Style” are not trying to freak you out. You do not have to have your style defined. You do not actually need an artist’s statement. Rephrase it to “Paint however you want.”
And hey: maybe you don’t have a style yet. Maybe you are just learning basic skills. Maybe you are in a stage that is so exploratory that everything is subject to rapid change. People don’t seem to worry about “having a style” for most skills (baking, riding a bike, etc.), especially for beginners, so why should art be different? You can still share your art without proving your cred.
Even for more advanced artists, style is always evolving. It’s not something you lock in. Elements you identify as being part of your style now may be totally absent from your work in a few years. You may have yet to discover elements that will become your signature later. Maybe it’s better not to take the temperature of your style that often.
This isn’t so much a technique for finding your style as a mindset shift. Stop thinking of your style as something you must craft and curate and decide upon, and start thinking of it as something that happens to you whether you want it or not. That may sound ominous, but it’s really freeing. It’s something you don’t have to think about. Do what you like and your style will follow.