Examining The Artistic Style Of
Your
Influences
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Nov 4th 2013
Many people have said that when you're just starting out as an
artist, the most
important thing isn't your own style, the most important thing is the
fundamentals and making as much art as possible, and your own style
will naturally come out in time. This is true, but that shouldn't stop
you from exploring the styles of your influences, and relate them to
the kind of work you yourself would like to do.
Artist Anthony
Jones recently posted this on his twitter feed: "If your style is
influenced by one source, it's recognizable. If it's influenced by
many, it becomes unrecognizable."
At about the same time, artist Ben Mauro had the good idea
of creating these collages of the work of specific artists or art
movements. It really lets you see a person's style at a glance.
This got me thinking of a fun little thing to try. I picked a number
of my favorite artists, created groups of some of my favorite images of
theirs, and then wrote down the 5 things the images had in common. In
other words, analyzing the style of my influences. What are the 5
elements an artist has that really define their work compared to
other artists? What 5 things say "ah yes, this work is made by artist
X". Lets
do some examples...
Exercise 1
Analyze your influences. For this, I've picked 5 of my influences,
not necessarily my most important influences, but 5 I felt would be
good examples to analyze.
Ashley Wood
- Dark figure against light background
- Simple primitives (cube, cylinder) for body shapes
- Color Scheme: One color (often ocre or brown)
- Mist
- Big painterly brush strokes
JWM Turner
- Vehicles on water with sky above
- Color Scheme: Blue, yellow, orange
- Mist
- Big painterly brush strokes
- Dirt Layers
Kow Yokoyama (Models)
- World War II style robots
- No head, hatch to large bulge
- Shape Language: Bulging top
- Kit Bash details
- Rusty & dirty painted metal
Zdzislaw Beksinski
- Organics
- Dark figure against light background
- Color Scheme: Complementary colors
- Melted distorted figures
- Spider web / bones / tree limb type details
- Mist
John Harris
- Space ship In environment
- Vast Scale
- Color Scheme: Complementary colors
- Mist
- Painterly
Now try it with 5 or more of your own influences.
Exercise 2
Now, if you're an artist just starting out, and you feel
you don't have a strongly defined style, try this exercise: First do
exercise 1. Next, note that some things may show up again and again.
Like 3 of your influences may all have a very painterly style. Or 2 of
your influences like robots, etc. Choose 5 of these reoccurring things
that appear in your influences, and work on images based on those 5
things, as these are probably 5 of the things that are most important
to you.
Exercise 3
If you're an established artist who has a recognizable
style, as well as doing exercise 1, do the same thing with your own
artwork, or have a close friend do it for you if you want a more
unbiased opinion. I'll do the exercise with my own artwork:
- Robots
- Sunsets
- Pipes, wires and tentacles
- Dark figure against light background
- Color Scheme: One Saturated color with small accent
- Mist
- Dirty, Rusty Painted Metal
- Dirt Layers
Once done, choose 10 reoccurring things
that appear in your influences, but remove from the list any
things you're already exploring in your own artwork, and then make
images that highlight the remaining items on the list. For example,
several of my influences use strong complimentary colors, and I don't
do that as much in my own work. So in future images, I'm going to
explore adding more complementary colors.
Conclusion
Remember, this sort of analysis is a guide, you shouldn't
feel trapped by the results. If you notice you have tentacles in all
your images, this doesn't mean you need to put tentacles in all your
images or they won't look like your style. Artists work are constantly
changing and evolving, and going with your gut is the most important
thing. But hopefully these 3 exercises not only help you analyze your
influences, but suggest areas of new exploration for your own work.
Don't be afraid to experiment and try new things.
