![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seleneheart posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
drawesomeFind My Style Post
Last winter, I had grown a bit frustrated with my art. I felt that I was reasonably competent, especially if I really worked at it with multiple thumbnails and drafts, but I felt I was lacking because I didn't have a personal style. I had watched several YouTube videos on finding your style, but their advice seemed haphazard and random. One in particular said something like "burn the end of a stick and draw with it" or "draw with rocks." Basically, 'get out of your own head'. Not helpful.
However, I found a class on SkillShare that has blown me away and I can't recommend highly enough.
The Style Class: Work Out Your Illustration Style in a Daily Project by Tom Froese
Aftergoss encouraged me, I decided to put this post together, because this journey has been eye-opening and rewarding, and I've barely gotten started.
Introduction
The first hour of the class is very reflective and analytical - the teacher discusses the elements of style, the difference between an 'artist' and a 'designer'.
For me, not being a professional at this, the distinction between art and design comes down to whether the piece was initiated by me or by someone else. If I make an art piece that is completely my own idea, I would consider that 'art'. If I make a piece that is constrained by a prompt or a story created by someone else, I would call that 'design.' I think there's a lot of overlap between the two especially for things like Inktober that are based on prompts but with wide latitude for interpretation. This is just how I think about it as it applies to me. Other people may have different interpretations.
He also presents a series of questions designed to get us thinking about how we view our art, our goals, and our experience. His theory is that our personal style arises out of our natural drawing style, our chosen technique (including media), and the subject.
He distinguishes between subjects that are representative (person, thing, scene) and conceptual (idea or process). For technique, that includes the media we choose, but also whether we are trying for realism, more illustrative, or abstract.
He discusses traditional versus digital media, and the tools and techniques of each that are analogous to the other. He doesn't go into every digital tool available, but sticks to Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate.
This is just a general summary, and doesn't include the examples he used from both his own work and from other artists. If you have a Skillshare account, I highly recommend taking his class for a full sense of what he is saying.
In the course of thinking about and reflecting on these first set of videos, I suddenly remembered what was probably my earliest art inspiration and one that I obsessively tried to copy in my drawings and paintings as a child - Eyvind Earle, who did the background artwork for the animated Sleeping Beauty.
I wish I still had some of those old drawings of mine to put on this post.
Now that I've remembered, and looking back at my work, I can definitely see how this has continued to influence the art that I'm drawn to and the art I produce, all these many, many years later.
Exercise 1: Inspiration Case Study
In this exercise, we are told to think of our favorite artists that we admire for their style. Then, gather examples of their art, and add them to one sheet of paper (digital or hard copy) in a collage. Next, annotate this collage. Analyze these pieces. What style elements do we like? What techniques are they using? What is the context of their art (what are they making - prints? ads? t-shirts?).
I chose Amy Brown, Danica Sills, and Ravenari. As we will see, there is a definite pattern emerging already - all three artists have a more illustrative style, with fantastical elements that shade into a darker aesthetic. I used Procreate with the Apple pencil to make my collages because I wanted to hand-write it instead of typing. As we know, handwriting results in our brains processing information better.
Here's the one I did for Ravenari:
Exercise 2: Creative Self-Inventory
At this point, we gather our own art, pieces that we feel good about, and analyze what parts of it we liked, what elements we might like to reinforce. Once again, gather it into a collage and annotate it, this time circling things, drawing arrows, being specific.
Here is mine:
Project Day 1: Make a Plan
The overall goal of the class is to produce 26 art pieces, one for each letter of the English alphabet. At the planning stage, we choose an overarching theme for the 26 pieces - the teacher chose 'trail running' and I chose 'dark woods.'
Then decide the context - where will these 26 pieces end up, where will they exist? The teacher decided to make a picture book and I decided I would do a series of water color paintings in a water color journal. But I also enjoy using ink, colored pencils, and metallic paint to embellish my paintings, so I plan to use mixed media for the final pieces.
The next step is to write out the alphabet and pick a word in the chosen theme to go with each letter. Keep the words simple, and try to choose both nouns and adjectives. This would allow us to depict things literally and figuratively. Some of the letters are very tough to find words for, but just get something down, and revise if needed. I ended up using a few verbs too.
I have changed several words from my original list due things that I felt were too similar, and others where I got a better idea of what I wanted to do.
I started this class in March, and by the time I got to this point, it was the end of April. I had several fandom commitments in May, June, and July, including various exchanges and big bangs, so I put this class aside. I forgot to mention that this class is over 4 hours long just in the length of the videos, never mind all the assignments to do in addition to watching the videos. It is a lot of work!
However, when I was working on those fandom commitments, I discovered that this class was already having an effect on my art style and process. I was being more deliberate about what I was doing, putting more thought into how I wanted it to look, and adding things that were uniquely my own flourishes. The act of reflecting and analyzing my work was already paying off.
Project Pilot Set: Preliminary Studies
At this point, the teacher suggests choosing 3-5 words from the list and focusing on them for what he calls a 'pilot set'.
The first step in creating the pilot set is to Google reference images using one of the chosen words from the pilot set. He suggests using Google images instead of Pinterest (or similar) because we don't want anything that has been highly curated. At this point, we are gathering ideas and need to keep things as wide open as possible. This is especially true if the word in question is very conceptual.
One of the words I chose for my pilot set from my list was 'apple' but as my theme was 'dark' woods, I wanted the apple to be poisoned. I didn't feel like I needed to collect images of apples because we usually have some in the fridge, but I decided I wanted to include a bottle of poison. Googling that resulted in a lot of clip art with skull and cross bones, which was a little too on the nose, and not fitting with the overall vibe I was going for. But it was a place to start.
After looking at many images of bottles, wandering into the Lord of the Rings and Galadriel's phial (I'm aware of the irony of this being the exact opposite of poison), I finally started googling antique perfume bottles with silver cladding. Finally, I had some references that resonated with what I was trying to do.
This is just an example of how I had to continuously refine what I was looking for as I adjusted my idea of what I wanted to do. 'Apple' is easy to represent, but 'poison apple' is harder.
Once we have our reference photos, we sketch from them, as many as we think we need. Sketch until you know this object/idea.
Here's some sketches I did directly from reference photos, although I added the leafy filigree to the last one that wasn't in the photo:
Glass with metal on it is particularly tricky because of the way that both materials interact with light, and I really needed to pay attention to that.
Project Pilot Set: Sketching Towards Ideas
Sketching towards ideas means that we start using the information and skills we've gathered from the reference photos to generate something from our own imaginations.
At this point, with the bottle being the difficult aspect of this piece, I narrowed down my idea of the bottle. Here's the progression of me deciding what I wanted the bottle to look like:
The next step is to make thumbnails of the concepts we're thinking about with the correct aspect ratio. The point here is not to worry about being specific with the sketches, but just roughly work out ideas. To make the thumbnails, I measured my water color journal, discovered it was 8.5x11, and used the drawing guide on Procreate to make rectangles with that aspect ratio. Once I had the first one, I scaled it down and copied it until I could fit six to a page.
Here's my blank thumbnail page:
If you were doing this in a sketchbook, just measure out rectangles with the correct ratio. I think doing this digitally as this point is much better for me, because once I had my first set, I could endlessly copy them and wouldn't waste time measuring rectangles. One way I'm aware that I self-sabotage is get into the weeds with things like 'setting up'. Part of it is fear of starting in case I 'mess up'.
Anyway, the point is to make rough sketches until you think you have enough to pick one good idea from them. At this stage, it's just about getting ideas out; just drawing from imagination. He suggests if you're feeling stuck, to actually write the word from the list on the thumbnail - just to start making marks and that sometimes unlocks things.
I made the first six, but the last one seemed to be getting someplace that I liked, so I made three more. The goal at this point is to find a concept that can be refined in the next set.
At this point, I had a composition that I liked, and so I copied this thumbnail to full size, and started refining my sketch.
.
I also realized that I needed a stopper for the bottle, so I went back and designed one that would match the bottle:
Here is my refined sketch, I used the symmetry drawing guide on Procreate for the bottle and stopper:
According to the teacher, we are supposed to go through this process with all 5 of the words for our pilot set. So, so much work and time.
Project Pilot Set: Finished Artwork
The teacher does not offer much advice at this step, because his goal is not to teach us how to paint or illustrate, but to make things our own. He does go through his own process for the set he's working on.
One interesting piece of advice he offered for digital painters - don't use someone else's brush set exclusively. If the goal is to make our artwork unique to us, using a set that many other people are also using doesn't help that. He recommends finding a brush or two from each set that we use as favorites and thus we create our own brush set. Another option would be to make our own brushes from scratch.
At this point, I went in and digitally painted my refined sketch. Once I finished, I had a decent piece of art, but I decided it was too derivative, and didn't look right. So I turned all those layers off and tried again (as we all can see, some line work was on the wrong layer, but we all know how that goes :P ). I'm really glad I decided to do this part digitally, because it would be aggravating to start working on this in traditional media (watercolors in my case) and try to do it over.
Here are the two versions:
I wasn't exactly happy with the background color, so I kept changing options. Another advantage of digital for prep work!
Here is the final piece:
Am I completely satisfied with this? No, not at all. There's mistakes, there's ideas that didn't quite translate, and assorted other problems. It's actually a bit of a hot mess, and I sort of regret not going with the 'first' final version above.
However, is this 100% my own ideas and work? Absolutely. Maybe it's not where I want my style to be, but it's just the first out of twenty-six works.
Maybe I'll do a follow up post when I finish them all (sometime next year, probably), just to see where I end up! ^_^
tl:dr - it's a lot of work, but I'm enjoying the class and the process
Last winter, I had grown a bit frustrated with my art. I felt that I was reasonably competent, especially if I really worked at it with multiple thumbnails and drafts, but I felt I was lacking because I didn't have a personal style. I had watched several YouTube videos on finding your style, but their advice seemed haphazard and random. One in particular said something like "burn the end of a stick and draw with it" or "draw with rocks." Basically, 'get out of your own head'. Not helpful.
However, I found a class on SkillShare that has blown me away and I can't recommend highly enough.
The Style Class: Work Out Your Illustration Style in a Daily Project by Tom Froese
After
goss encouraged me, I decided to put this post together, because this journey has been eye-opening and rewarding, and I've barely gotten started.Introduction
The first hour of the class is very reflective and analytical - the teacher discusses the elements of style, the difference between an 'artist' and a 'designer'.
For me, not being a professional at this, the distinction between art and design comes down to whether the piece was initiated by me or by someone else. If I make an art piece that is completely my own idea, I would consider that 'art'. If I make a piece that is constrained by a prompt or a story created by someone else, I would call that 'design.' I think there's a lot of overlap between the two especially for things like Inktober that are based on prompts but with wide latitude for interpretation. This is just how I think about it as it applies to me. Other people may have different interpretations.
He also presents a series of questions designed to get us thinking about how we view our art, our goals, and our experience. His theory is that our personal style arises out of our natural drawing style, our chosen technique (including media), and the subject.
He distinguishes between subjects that are representative (person, thing, scene) and conceptual (idea or process). For technique, that includes the media we choose, but also whether we are trying for realism, more illustrative, or abstract.
He discusses traditional versus digital media, and the tools and techniques of each that are analogous to the other. He doesn't go into every digital tool available, but sticks to Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate.
This is just a general summary, and doesn't include the examples he used from both his own work and from other artists. If you have a Skillshare account, I highly recommend taking his class for a full sense of what he is saying.
In the course of thinking about and reflecting on these first set of videos, I suddenly remembered what was probably my earliest art inspiration and one that I obsessively tried to copy in my drawings and paintings as a child - Eyvind Earle, who did the background artwork for the animated Sleeping Beauty.
I wish I still had some of those old drawings of mine to put on this post.
Now that I've remembered, and looking back at my work, I can definitely see how this has continued to influence the art that I'm drawn to and the art I produce, all these many, many years later.
Exercise 1: Inspiration Case Study
In this exercise, we are told to think of our favorite artists that we admire for their style. Then, gather examples of their art, and add them to one sheet of paper (digital or hard copy) in a collage. Next, annotate this collage. Analyze these pieces. What style elements do we like? What techniques are they using? What is the context of their art (what are they making - prints? ads? t-shirts?).
I chose Amy Brown, Danica Sills, and Ravenari. As we will see, there is a definite pattern emerging already - all three artists have a more illustrative style, with fantastical elements that shade into a darker aesthetic. I used Procreate with the Apple pencil to make my collages because I wanted to hand-write it instead of typing. As we know, handwriting results in our brains processing information better.
Here's the one I did for Ravenari:
Exercise 2: Creative Self-Inventory
At this point, we gather our own art, pieces that we feel good about, and analyze what parts of it we liked, what elements we might like to reinforce. Once again, gather it into a collage and annotate it, this time circling things, drawing arrows, being specific.
Here is mine:
Project Day 1: Make a Plan
The overall goal of the class is to produce 26 art pieces, one for each letter of the English alphabet. At the planning stage, we choose an overarching theme for the 26 pieces - the teacher chose 'trail running' and I chose 'dark woods.'
Then decide the context - where will these 26 pieces end up, where will they exist? The teacher decided to make a picture book and I decided I would do a series of water color paintings in a water color journal. But I also enjoy using ink, colored pencils, and metallic paint to embellish my paintings, so I plan to use mixed media for the final pieces.
The next step is to write out the alphabet and pick a word in the chosen theme to go with each letter. Keep the words simple, and try to choose both nouns and adjectives. This would allow us to depict things literally and figuratively. Some of the letters are very tough to find words for, but just get something down, and revise if needed. I ended up using a few verbs too.
I have changed several words from my original list due things that I felt were too similar, and others where I got a better idea of what I wanted to do.
I started this class in March, and by the time I got to this point, it was the end of April. I had several fandom commitments in May, June, and July, including various exchanges and big bangs, so I put this class aside. I forgot to mention that this class is over 4 hours long just in the length of the videos, never mind all the assignments to do in addition to watching the videos. It is a lot of work!
However, when I was working on those fandom commitments, I discovered that this class was already having an effect on my art style and process. I was being more deliberate about what I was doing, putting more thought into how I wanted it to look, and adding things that were uniquely my own flourishes. The act of reflecting and analyzing my work was already paying off.
Project Pilot Set: Preliminary Studies
At this point, the teacher suggests choosing 3-5 words from the list and focusing on them for what he calls a 'pilot set'.
The first step in creating the pilot set is to Google reference images using one of the chosen words from the pilot set. He suggests using Google images instead of Pinterest (or similar) because we don't want anything that has been highly curated. At this point, we are gathering ideas and need to keep things as wide open as possible. This is especially true if the word in question is very conceptual.
One of the words I chose for my pilot set from my list was 'apple' but as my theme was 'dark' woods, I wanted the apple to be poisoned. I didn't feel like I needed to collect images of apples because we usually have some in the fridge, but I decided I wanted to include a bottle of poison. Googling that resulted in a lot of clip art with skull and cross bones, which was a little too on the nose, and not fitting with the overall vibe I was going for. But it was a place to start.
After looking at many images of bottles, wandering into the Lord of the Rings and Galadriel's phial (I'm aware of the irony of this being the exact opposite of poison), I finally started googling antique perfume bottles with silver cladding. Finally, I had some references that resonated with what I was trying to do.
This is just an example of how I had to continuously refine what I was looking for as I adjusted my idea of what I wanted to do. 'Apple' is easy to represent, but 'poison apple' is harder.
Once we have our reference photos, we sketch from them, as many as we think we need. Sketch until you know this object/idea.
Here's some sketches I did directly from reference photos, although I added the leafy filigree to the last one that wasn't in the photo:
Glass with metal on it is particularly tricky because of the way that both materials interact with light, and I really needed to pay attention to that.
Project Pilot Set: Sketching Towards Ideas
Sketching towards ideas means that we start using the information and skills we've gathered from the reference photos to generate something from our own imaginations.
At this point, with the bottle being the difficult aspect of this piece, I narrowed down my idea of the bottle. Here's the progression of me deciding what I wanted the bottle to look like:
The next step is to make thumbnails of the concepts we're thinking about with the correct aspect ratio. The point here is not to worry about being specific with the sketches, but just roughly work out ideas. To make the thumbnails, I measured my water color journal, discovered it was 8.5x11, and used the drawing guide on Procreate to make rectangles with that aspect ratio. Once I had the first one, I scaled it down and copied it until I could fit six to a page.
Here's my blank thumbnail page:
If you were doing this in a sketchbook, just measure out rectangles with the correct ratio. I think doing this digitally as this point is much better for me, because once I had my first set, I could endlessly copy them and wouldn't waste time measuring rectangles. One way I'm aware that I self-sabotage is get into the weeds with things like 'setting up'. Part of it is fear of starting in case I 'mess up'.
Anyway, the point is to make rough sketches until you think you have enough to pick one good idea from them. At this stage, it's just about getting ideas out; just drawing from imagination. He suggests if you're feeling stuck, to actually write the word from the list on the thumbnail - just to start making marks and that sometimes unlocks things.
I made the first six, but the last one seemed to be getting someplace that I liked, so I made three more. The goal at this point is to find a concept that can be refined in the next set.
At this point, I had a composition that I liked, and so I copied this thumbnail to full size, and started refining my sketch.
. I also realized that I needed a stopper for the bottle, so I went back and designed one that would match the bottle:
Here is my refined sketch, I used the symmetry drawing guide on Procreate for the bottle and stopper:
According to the teacher, we are supposed to go through this process with all 5 of the words for our pilot set. So, so much work and time.
Project Pilot Set: Finished Artwork
The teacher does not offer much advice at this step, because his goal is not to teach us how to paint or illustrate, but to make things our own. He does go through his own process for the set he's working on.
One interesting piece of advice he offered for digital painters - don't use someone else's brush set exclusively. If the goal is to make our artwork unique to us, using a set that many other people are also using doesn't help that. He recommends finding a brush or two from each set that we use as favorites and thus we create our own brush set. Another option would be to make our own brushes from scratch.
At this point, I went in and digitally painted my refined sketch. Once I finished, I had a decent piece of art, but I decided it was too derivative, and didn't look right. So I turned all those layers off and tried again (as we all can see, some line work was on the wrong layer, but we all know how that goes :P ). I'm really glad I decided to do this part digitally, because it would be aggravating to start working on this in traditional media (watercolors in my case) and try to do it over.
Here are the two versions:
I wasn't exactly happy with the background color, so I kept changing options. Another advantage of digital for prep work!
Here is the final piece:
Am I completely satisfied with this? No, not at all. There's mistakes, there's ideas that didn't quite translate, and assorted other problems. It's actually a bit of a hot mess, and I sort of regret not going with the 'first' final version above.
However, is this 100% my own ideas and work? Absolutely. Maybe it's not where I want my style to be, but it's just the first out of twenty-six works.
Maybe I'll do a follow up post when I finish them all (sometime next year, probably), just to see where I end up! ^_^
tl:dr - it's a lot of work, but I'm enjoying the class and the process
no subject
Date: 2022-09-23 01:12 pm (UTC)