Looking for Style

It's not uncommon for me to draw things based on my favourite Fantasy Of The Hour. I remember way back when I was seventeen, drawing on the train as I endured the 2 hour trip to school. I really wonder how I had the courage to sit there and draw infront of all those people. My shading wasn't very good, composition sloppy and my art had more yaoi overtones than I'm willing to admit even to this day. And they were Anime. A bit too anime.

Don't get me wrong, I love anime. I watch it near everyday, I talk about it, sometimes even wish there were men in real life with nine-tailed mystical foxes sealed in their navels and blonde hair who could replicate themselves with ninjutsu techniques. I have seen some incredible Anime art, but the popularity of the genre has spawned a massive amount of pictures of generic, big-eyed figures posing randomly. In a genre with such a following of artists across the whole spectrum of skills, distinguishing yourself is incredibly difficult.

Just finding a way to establish your own style is hard enough. From what I've observed, style comes in the shape of the eyes, representation of the figure, amount of detail and method of coloring. You can tweak these in any which way, but there will still be someone who draws in a similar way. I have come a long way from those random little sketches in the train, but I'm still looking for a style of my own.

Developing your own style is difficult. It's like developing your personality, only on paper. In an excellent article by Jason Beam, style is described as an extension of oneself, a visual of how your brain works. (If that's the case, I think had way too many homo-erotic inclinations when I was seventeen.) Style is what makes your paintings memorable, something that is you.

I believe myself a very pedestrian kind of artist. I just plod along, picking up techniques I like from here and there, trying to integrate them into my art. Thus, my style keeps changing, sometimes according to my mood, or a piece of art that inspires me, the medium that I use... I seek my own style, yet I never settle on any single style I end up developing. Looking back at my old gallery on Deviantart is kind of like going on a journey. I can see my style changing.

I really think it was dissatisfaction that spurred me on to keep changing my art. Dissatisfaction at the way my art looked compared to others and the subsequent influx of humility has forced me to keep changing, keep trying. Sometimes I really wonder when on earth I'll settle on a style that I'm satisfied with, but then I realize that that would mean the death of my art.

Style by Jason Beam