What makes art appealing?

[monotone_ink]

How does one go about making their art look appealing?
Please discuss and share how you've gone about developing your own styles!

[mariusthered]

that question is like asking why people like curry, who can really say? what one person enjoys many more wont. There are lots of things about art that I enjoy but it's easier for me to say what i don't like (such as art that needs explaining to me to tell me what it is)

as for my own style well i dont really have one i change things as i see things done and always learning new ways to do things.

[Rodimus13]

hmmm maybe enjoy what you are drawing because if you enjoy it someone else will too?

says the writer, who only knows how to resize and slice images on photoshop

[frgmnt]

oooh boy wish i knew what is it...
But yeah, what @Rodimus13 said makes some sense, for your art to appeal to somebody, you need to first make it appealing to yourself. But I need to say this isn't actually as easy as it sounds.
Basically, what I mean is looking at your own art and asking yourself, would you pay attention to this piece if it wasn't drawn by you? Or the opposite, you would scroll past it without giving it a thought? (With my art, the answer is usually: nope, I wouldn't pay attention to it...)
Art needs to have something relatable to it to be appealing - it could be anything, like art style, or the topic (that's why fanart is usually more popular, it's easier for people to connect with a piece featuring something they already like).

I guess some way to do find your own style is to analyze artworks by other people that you like. Like, really analyze the hell out of them. Find multiple elements/techniques/themes in them that particularly appeal to you, and focus on trying to apply them in your own art? That's the theory - as for me, I'm too tired/unfocused/assfsdfgdg most of the time to actually do that.

[Kelheor]

People have too many different tastes, the thing one can call appealing another will call ugly! One artist just cannot appeal to everyone. The artist can only find the things they love and observe other people's reaction to their art.

I usually draw cute girls =) But there is a guy, whose pictures I have on all the stages of my style developing.
It's my OC, Heilang. From up to 2008 my art was all about anime, this is definitely not the best picture, but it shows the typical style of that time. When I went to university, I stopped drawing almost at all, and I tried to draw people in more realistic way in 2010-2012. This went really really bad

Then we bought a tablet and in 2016 I started 1page1day. Then you can see some anatomy and colours finding their way through! So, he looks much better in the beginning of 2017.
In 2019 he looks quite like I originally wanted him to (in 2006, yep), and yet he is still a work in progress and I will probably never be satisfied.

So, what did I do? Mostly, drawing and analyzing. I changed my style not once and not twice, I looked at my previous art for comparison, I looked at particular artworks I like a lot, finding specific artists and learning what is it that I love so much about their art

[JRHoch]

I remember in high school really not liking modern art. After college it really hit me, and the old Flemish paintings I used to love, started to feel a little dated and staid. Still love me some Vermeer, though.

[Cronaj]

As was mentioned by @mariusthered and @Kelheor, one person's trash may be another person's treasure. That being said, there are a few basic principles to help elevate your art to the next level.

Some basic concepts to consider:

1. Contrast
2. Color Theory
3. Composition

Shall we call them 'The Three C's"? Anyway... Honestly, an art fundamentals class can teach you better than I can, but keeping these things in mind will yield much better results in your art than anything else. You can learn to render as detailed as possible, but without these 3 things, your work will always look unfinished.

In regards to my own art, I'll talk about style, since my style is slightly unconventional for comics. Most comics you see feature linework of some sort and usually a simplistic coloring style. When I first began my comic, I did the same:

However, when I used this style, I felt like my panels were too stiff. The characters looked like posed manequins instead of living, breathing people. In order to "loosen up" and make my work better, I decided to move to a messier, painterly style and increase the intensity of the color (as had already been starting to happen naturally in my pages):