How did you develop the art style that you have?

[Mallory]

I watched a LOT of anime so it's been sort of ingrained in my brain, and comes through a lot in my art style.

Initially I was drawing things like this (~2006-ish for these two)

Because I thought that like, as an artist I HAD to draw normally-proportioned people, even though I really enjoyed drawing chibis. In the end it was probably a good thing because I did learn a lot of anatomy from making this my "main" style instead of gravitating towards something more cartoony.

Around this time though, I was really getting into a number of popular artists like MissRuin, and that was the first time I realized that technically, I COULD have characters who existed purely in the cartoony world (and not just exaggerated occasionally for cute effects) and that it was a valid art style to "major" in.

So I started drawing things like this (early version of Dot from Engram):

You might notice that most of these are not colored and that's because I uh... that was one of the last things I wrapped my mind around. I had a neck injury that prevented me from drawing in any long-term capacity for a number of years, and during that time, what happened was a) I significantly simplified my line work (because I couldn't do more detailed stuff due to the pain) and b) ended up having to rely on color to give visual interest to my work (because I could do cel shading with a fill tool and that was easier on my hands).

Somewhat ironically, doing all this simplified shape stuff with cartoons helped me figure out how to shade my more realistic attempts at art, haha. So that came to a full circle.

I'm still trying to push how quickly I can work so... I expect something has to give about my lineart and coloring soon because they take up the majority of my time spent on art now. I'd like to cut another 20% from my comic workflow for my own health.

[RedLenai]

Well, I simply draw trying to emulate what I like, for example
The Style that I use for Scarlet Society is inspired on Kiyo Qjo's, I love the detail, the long eyelashes, detailed hair and clothes but still very animeish and shoujo like

My style

Kiyo Qjo's

[Lensing]

I really like the style of your drawings and I always thought that it would make sense to first learn everything else
before learning to color. I always felt like I want to understand shapes and light before applying colors

[hakei]

I went through various styles, imitating Digimon, Naruto, Magi, Bleach, etc. cell-shaded, painterly, blah blah. I think my current style mixes everything, or so I like to think. I can still feel it evolving though, and I can't wait look back in a few years and see how much I changed.

But one thing's for sure — no matter how much I tried to stick to drawing circle irises, I always end up coming back to the oval iris style.

(I don't have any art saved from before 2012 )

When I dabbled in painterly style (2012 ish):

My era of doing airbrushed irises (2015 ish):

Current (2019 ish):

[thepenmonster]

I've always drawn the way I've drawn. I wouldn't say I've developed an art style as much as I've worked at defining and refining it. I was always falling short of what I wanted the image to be. So one habit I got into was taking something that didn't work and dissecting it.

The colors are me going over the original and pinpointing where things went off. Or figuring out where the lines should have gone. Basically killing my babies so that they may be reborn. I do this with every drawing. Even the ones I think are complete because art isn't completed. It's abandoned.

Another habit was using photo reference. My own photos. I mean, if it was good enough for Norman Rockwell...

Breaking down actual human bodies, how normal people move through their lives, and discarding the comic book heroic ideal that I had been failing to achieve in my art really helped me a lot. I also started using the tools available to me. It turned out that setting up a two or three point perspective in Clip Studio is a hell of a lot easier than doing it with a finite ruler and limited table space.

Then I tried to apply what I learnt and, hopefully, build upon it into something worth looking at.

The most important thing? Recognizing where your strengths lay and leaning into it. I can do a spot of colour but I'm far better at black & white so that's where my focus stays.

[abigaillmartin]

My style has a complicated history as I drew in many styles over the years in middle school. When I was in elementary school or younger I would often draw my favorite cartoons in a very simple way. My art style has always been simple yet expressive. I’ve always loved drawing expressions so as my style progressed my expressions progressed too.

In middle school I wrote Star Wars and Harry Potter fanfiction and I would always draw them as Lego characters. I was inspired by what was popular at the time with Ninjago and Legends of Chima. (Such good shows) But later I got into Minecraft and wanted to write a screenplay for a movie with the characters Steve and Alex. That was my first ever big project with a script I never got down to finishing it though.

After that I practiced more with the Minecraft style but it never really was blocky or square. My style had a sense of real life objects and the characters were square but not really. During that time I also got into anime and I really liked the style. My cousin at that time was (and still is) really good at drawing anime. I wanted to draw anime so my mom and I got manga drawing books from the library and I developed the style that I have now.

It wouldn’t be improved until I honed my style during high school and I had certain rules and shapes I used. And here we are!

[candiedcotton]

You do a great job with expressions as well, I just want to say. I've been following the progress of your webcomic and it's really taken off, you should be seriously proud of yourself!

[Hal]

I started drawing because of the band Gorillaz. I was obsessed with the characters, the art style, the animation style of the music videos, and many of my first comics were Gorillaz related! My art style is still the same I'd say, just significantly more evolved - anatomically better. I also took a lot of inspo from Invader Zim and JTHM!

[Nugtown]

I made a mental list of things which I like about art and keep trying to quantify their aesthetics into something I can recreate. High contrast? eye shapes? proportions? Do I need to learn how to draw something better? It's a slow process taking slivers and adopting things I like or just see around. Recently I made an inspiration folder hoping that would help.

It's a long process because i'm always at odds never being totally captivated by things, like (woah this is so cool I want to draw it all the time all day) But I won't accept feeling unsatisfied with my art style so i'm always working on it.

[hakei]

ahh thank you for your kind and encouraging words!

[candiedcotton]

For sure. I was thinking of doodling up something of your paring actually. I owe something to the community, and I want to support others. So if you're alright with it, I'd probably post it on my instagram or something and then tag you so folks can go check out your work.

(My instagram is awful and hardly has any followers, but hey, it's the thought that counts, lol)

Edit: WHEN DID YOU GET TO OVER A QUARTER MILLION SUBS ON WEBTOON WHAT.

That's AMAZING. Damn. You rockstar.

[RiidDisBuk3]

I mixed Dragon Ball with Bleach and the Fate Series. This is how it turned out;

[michoverse]

I just drew a lot and with the years I picked up some habits of how I draw features and shapes and how I color, and that became my style
If you want to see more of my style you are welcome to visit my instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/micho_verse/

[lizardlullabye]

I just drew stuff I liked over the years from bit of animations, comics, games, pictures in children books, other artist's illustrations & drawings, etc. Cross-overs were pretty fun to experiment with because I studied two or more things separately and then combined them, picked up shapes and coloring skills bit by bit.

Overall, I think my drawing became more clean and simple, b/c I learned details are sometimes a lot of work that I don't care to do. Here's what I drew last.

[hakei]

Ahh of course, I'd love to see your take on the ywam characters!

And thank you, the growth was directly the result of Tiktok/Instagram marketing — I tore out half of my hair trying to learn + see actual results but it's been effective

[TedGravesArt]

That's a good question, I'm not sure. I guess I drew with a pretty traditional 90s anime aesthetic in the late 90s, and then as time went on I did a lot more studies, still lifes, I drew from life a lot more. So my art became a lot more structured, the anatomy became more refined, and my art tended to reflect what I saw in real life a lot more than the abstractions of cartoons. Also, my day job is game art, so I do a lot of sculpting, and spent quite a lot of time coding lighting models from scratch in HLSL, so I got to understand the mechanics of light, shadow, and color in a much deeper and technical way. Then one hand washed the other, so to speak.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

Mostly inspired by western animation, I've never really drawn trying to copy someone else's style. I'm inspired by Charles Shulz's late squiggly arthritis years (because it runs in my family), Earthbound for random unique backgrounds in every panel (Which is secretly how I learn digital painting skills) and cel-shaded video games such as Jet Set Radio inspired me to make sure to take the extra step to always give everyone a thick outline. I've never really been good at colors so I just kinda throw rainbows at the canvas.

[candiedcotton]

Hey, marketing is half the battle. You worked your butt off to get what you have, so be proud for sure. I remember back when you first started posting it and I thought it was so undervalued at the time. You're just starting to see the numbers you deserve, and it'll only keep going up. Just take care of yourself meanwhile!

[UrMom]

No idea what I took from, never paid much attention.

According to my mom I started drawing when I was 3 years old, my whole childhood was just aimless drawing. A lot of times I drew characters like fairies or princesses, but I also drew animals or plants. Didn't really draw from inspirations, it was always just a thing I did because it was enjoyable. The earliest notable thing I drew was this humanoid version of my cat I made when I was 9 or so.

Atheist ramble

(Random enough I drew this because I wanted the god Yahweh to turn my cat into a person so I had a friend to play with, or I would stop being a christian. It was confirmation bias, I already knew the god didn't exist and just wanted an excuse to solidify my atheism.)

It wasn't until I started high school when I began developing a "style" of sorts, as I made it in with a nerd weeb group who loved sharing and reading manga. There wasn't a specific Japanese style I latched onto, I just started trying to eyeball things I liked from different manga and anime. The earliest recording I have of this is a drawing from when I was 14.

This was also the time I started making characters that would stick around, the most prominent being 4 that I still have to this day, but they're wildly different from their original designs. For example, here are 2 from the 4 I drew when I was 15 vs. when I was 21.

At 17 my vague animu style developed a little more since I was drawing almost constantly. Random, but around this time I was oddly popular on DA, I apparently had the right style at the right time.

18 was the major turning point for me. I was getting tired of where I was creatively, and in my limited viewpoint being a "real artist" was to love the human body and humanity in general. Which at the time I was rather grossed out by real people, being kinda brainwashed to the aesthetic of anime and manga. So one day I decided to make myself like how actual people looked, but diving headfirst into looking at nudes and porn. (At the time, to me there was no better way to get over my gross-out than to see real people being gross.) At this time I didn't artistically study real life yet, but the shift in mindset alone made my style change, this was the first thing I drew in that changed style at 19.

From there my style has slowly developed into... whatever it is. I have to say as it is now I'm not as satisfied as in my earlier years, I do miss drawing excessively detailed outfits like back in the day, but I chalk it up to the fact that I have a third of the time I did back then to dedicated to drawing. I can't put as much work into what I make as I'd like. For reference, here is some stuff I drew just last year.

Nudity, gore, body horror, blood!

Again, I can't say for sure what I've taken from to develop my style. I've mostly just let my hand/subconscious do whatever it felt like doing.

Edit: Pff forgot to mention when I started looking at nudes and such, visually I also began studying Da Vinci, because in my teen brain he was "the pinnacle of what Real Artists™ strive to become!". Between my late teens to early 20's if you asked me what my favorite artist was it was always him. That was a lie, my real favorites were and are Mucha, Giger, Dali, Rockwell, Erin Hanson and James Jean. I still respect Da Vinci's work to no end, but didn't realize until my mid to late 20's that I value expressive, solid styles and vibrant colors over high quality base realism.

[system]

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