How do I create my own artstyle?

You have to experiment. If you need references to do art then try doing pieces from memory. Don’t worry about it not looking perfect. Try contour drawings. Paint really fast. Try different mediums on surfaces like wood, paper, canvas, masonite etc. Mix media as well. do 3D art. The experimenting will take you down a road of investigation that causes you to learn about yourself. You will gravitate to a style that is easy for you and be comfortable during your creation. Style is knowing yourself and working within your means. I love detailed painting but I don’t have the patience to do that never did. I always like working fast and messy that’s just me so that is my style, me.

Watch cartoons.

Read comics.

Study your favorite artists.

Look up tutorials.

Practice, practice, practice.

Pick up tips as you go.

Challenge yourself once in a while.

With the exception of BoomerZ, everyone in this thread is dead fucking wrong.

Your job is not to create an art style, it is to find the art style you already have.

And that is something that happens on its own, over time, with or without your input.

So don't worry about it. Don't even think about it.

Seriously, stop thinking about it. It's not worth caring about. This grand esoteric concept of 'having an art style' is something I see so damn many young creators get hung up on. Hell, I got hung up on the idea myself when I was but a wee lad, and it actively slowed my growth and hurt my mental state.

I was so wrapped up in the idea of 'having an art style' that I didn't focus on my fundamentals or storytelling. Looking back now, I had an art style from day one. Literally every single person already has one built into their brains from birth. Understanding, refining, and developing that style is a skill that you can train and exercise to improve, but you don't just 'not have an art style'. That's akin to not having food you like or music you enjoy.

As soon as you are capable of differentiating one thing from another and assigning it a value judgment, you have an art style, so get the fuck over it.

Work on fundamentals, learn things like anatomy, form, perspective, movement, expression, texture, and composition. All of those things will serve you much better as things to focus on, and your precious exalted 'style' will begin to present itself naturally as you practice.

And you should definitely practice.
Like a lot.
A lot a lot.

Draw stuff. Keep drawing stuff, Draw until you've filled your entire sketchbook or canvas or whatever, and then draw some fucking more.

If you want to get better at doing a thing, then you have to do said thing. The more you do it, the more you'll improve. Find other people who are doing what you want to do better than you can do it, and then listen to them. Draw something, then critically analyze it to see where you fucked up, then try it again and see if you can do better on the next attempt.

Forget about 'creating' an art style, don't even worry about 'finding' the style you already have. It matters about 1/100th as much as you think it does in the long run, and you'll find it anyways along the way, so just don't think about it.

@DNoble
Hey uh- you are right about not needing an art style when starting out, but you didn’t need to single only one person out as right. It sounded kind of aggressive

Absolutely, I totally agree! For me, style felt like something I could control more at the beginning of my art journey than building my basic skill set so I remember focusing on that a lot to alleviate some of the stress that learning fundamentals brought me. We are always changing and evolving in our work. I think the ability to lessen your grip on the desire to have 'style' comes with time and road paved with so many drawings.

Your tone and saying all but one person was wrong (even though I recall more than one person here saying it’ll just happen with practice) seemed to strongly disagree with what you’re saying now..

Everyone has an artstyle, it´s something you can´t even avoid.
Your style will gradually change over the years. Emphasis on gradually,
it is a process. Looking at artwork, studying art styles, copying, producing
sequential art.

I will give you some examples where you can see that:
-the sketch a day topic on this forum. Every artist on there has their
distincitve style. You can show me a sketch and I can tell you who did it
-comic artist meetings, 24 hours comic days, comic jams. I been to many
of them, every artist from young to old, not experienced to experienced
has their own style to draw sequential art and I never saw someone who
didn´t have their own art style

This is the last time I will be coming in this thread and at this point I hope it is locked because just wow...

@Tansy I hope you were able to glean some solid advice from all the people that chimed in here. Please do not let the behavior and opinions of some deter you in your journey.

@DNoble You have in your bio to "Be excellent to one another..." I figured you could use some reminding of that fact. Your behavior in your initial post was ABSOLUTELY uncalled for and abhorrent. I hope with all my heart that it does not deter OP from their art journey because if it was me? I would be putting the pencil down for a long time after that tirade. Not everyone responds well to aggressive language and I hope you can learn to be more compassionate towards those at the beginning of their art journey because everyone's journey is different. To force someone to focus on Loomis and perspective grids while actively ignoring their hopes and dreams of what their own style might one day be is ridiculous. Please think critically before you hit reply next time.

I couldn’t agree with this kid more. It’s never okay to speak in such an aggressive tone regardless what the subject is. Even outside the realm of art, any unkindness and use of aggression towards anyone will NOT be tolerated in my eyes. Not only it is a complete turn off for the person asking for this advice in the first place, it turns us off those trying to help them start out. When I started out as a little girl, my brother yes had some criticism but he never would’ve lashed out at me for it. If he ever did that, I probably would’ve gave up. So please, think before you speak. Be empathetic and let’s be kind moving forward. It really goes a long way.

• Sincerely, Cila

Figure out how to draw, then figure out what the rules of drawing are, then pick and choose which rules to use and which rules to break.

To add a little professional perspective in here but perhaps while... not being a jerk about everyone else's pretty valid opinions on a nuanced subject... You don't necessarily have to have just one style, and there's really no need to deliberately try to develop one.

When I approach a project, I decide how I'm drawing based on the project. I have a sort of "default style" which is how I draw and colour if I don't spend time deliberately thinking about how I draw, ink and colour, but even that is always in flux and always evolving. It's not necessarily a good idea to pin yourself down and say "this is my style now, this is how I draw eyes, this is how I draw hair" and then to not give yourself that room to grow and find better or more flexible ways to do things.

If I need to do a job where I must accurately capture a person's likeness (which I had to do on the BBC book "Doctor Who: Women Who Lived") I might push my style a bit closer to western comics with more naturalistic proportions and soft shading because it gives me more control over face shapes and lighting that matches specific scenes or places from that live action show.

If I need to make a webcomic to appeal to modern webcomics readers, like Errant, I let my weeby manga influences show through for an expressive, dynamic look, and go for simple cel shaded colouring that's quick to do so I can keep up a schedule.

If somebody wants digital painting, I tend to do more naturalistic proportions because that's usually what people who want that style are looking for, often for D&D campaigns and the like.

If I need to do cute mascots or sketchnotes to make tech events or talks less intimidating, I draw in a dot-eyed cartoon style with kind of chibi proportions, and I use warm, toy-like colours and shiny cel-shade rendering or minimal colour for speed and readability.

Because the thing that makes my style what it is, isn't just "she draws eyes like this" "she draws noses like this". It's more in how clearly I get across the intended meaning with relatively low detail, allowing a few strong lines with tension or relaxation to create a lively, dynamic look and very "readable" drawings.

So when you see a comic I drew when I was 22 or 23 years old....

fell_07.jpg700x1000 288 KB

It's not in colour like my current comics, the line quality is different, the level of detail overall is different, the hair is rendered differently from my webcomic, I drew noses differently.... but if you see a more modern page of mine...

5_035.jpg940x1309 493 KB

You probably wouldn't doubt that these were drawn by the same person about 14-15 years apart. Because you can see the Nomura, Kishimoto and Arakawa influenced proportions, the bold lines with strong line weight variation used to get across the tension in poses or the flow of fabric and hair, the simple, exaggerated expressions. (and the preoccupation with ladies with oversized swords exploding monsters might also be a clue...).

So if you're trying to develop a style, focus more on trying to express what you want to express. What energy, what emotions, what kind of vibe... and look at artists who evoke that feeling for inspiration, taking on ideas from what they do really well, but combining lots of different bits you like. You can pick combinations of vastly different artists for this from different countries, different media or genres... it's all good! Don't be scared to change or branch out; you don't have to just decide on a style and stick with it forever or use it exclusively (I'd have been screwed if I'd refused to ever draw in a non-manga style during the 2010-2016 Tumblr era where drawing manga style was suddenly extremely unfashionable).

If you study the fundamentals of drawing, eventually you will gain the skills and confidence to develop your own visual language.