Transcripts
1. Introduction: one of the most common questions I noticed that newer artists will ask more experienced artists is How do you get an art style? How did you find your art style? Like I want to go on this adventure, this journey, and I want to find my own art style. It's kind of like the ultimate artistic goal. Oftentimes, theme or experienced artists will tell the newer artist. You just need to draw a lot and it will emerge from within you. And I think that is true. I'm not saying that's not true. I do think that is true. However, when I was one of the newer artists asking the more experienced artist this question, I felt really frustrated by this answer because I did feel like I was drawing a lot. So now that I'm a more experienced artists, I wanted to come up with a practical guide for figuring out your art style. It's not going to give you all of the answers. You are still going to have to practice a lot. You're still going to have to draw a lot, but I think it can help you get started. Our style is a lot more than just how your are appears. But it is also about the way that you enjoy drawing. And that is what this class is going to help you, um, Discover so without further ado, let's get started.
2. What is an art style?: So here's my definition of an art style. My definition of an art style is the overlap between one's technical skills and a sense of who they are as a person. So technical skills would include things like color theory, perspective, composition, anatomy and who you are would entail things like What do you like? What is important to you? Were you drawn to and mixing those? You get your own unique art style or your artistic voice, and when you are first starting to draw, you might not have either of these. Ah, bubbles developed fully and so your art style is not super apparent. And so, in order for it to become more apparent, you need to work on both of these. And the more you do so, the more your art style is going to kind of emerge. And you might not always be growing at the same rate, so your technical skills might be stronger than a sense of who you are or vice versa. I personally find myself in the first category there. I think I have a pretty strong sense of how to draw, but I often get stuck with, um, what to draw because I'm like, who am I? What do I want to say? Or you might be on the other side where you feel like you do have a strong sense of who you are, but you're you feel frustrated because you don't have the technical skills yet to convey those. And, um, at some point you might reach stage for I don't think any artist feels like, if you were to ask them, would say Yes, I have reached stage for I am an art God. My art style is at the perfect overlap of masterful technical skill and have a very strong sense of self. I think artists are constantly discovering, um, new things about themselves and constantly wanting to improve. That being said, most of the artists I admire, I feel like our at this level. And so that is what I aspire to be. And when I was still, you know, back here, I really wish I had some kind of guidance for where to go. And so that's what I'm gonna talk about in my next video
3. The Art Style Compass: so the tool that I've developed is called the art style compass, and it's designed to being kind of a guide or a starting point if you are still trying to figure out what your art style is, and it's not going to give you a definitive answer, but it should give you a sense of, like maybe what to explore or how to even begin, and the way that it works is on. I am comparing two different factors that I think every artist has to consider when they are creating their art. The first factor I have put on the horizontal axis, which is lying dependency. And that is basically how much line work do you want to include in your heart? Do you want there to be lots of liner or no lines whatsoever? And on the Y axis I have placed, how much do you want to render your art? Do you want it to be like, kind of fully fleshed out? Or do you want? Are you more drawn to kind of like a flat? Ah ah flatter, less rendered style and I want it. Teoh look kind of like a graph because there is a lot of variation within each one of these quadrants. And so the idea is, by the end of this class, you will maybe decide what quadrant you tend to lean towards and where you might fit in that quadrant. And you'll see that even within each of these quadrants, there's going to be a very big variation in terms of art style. So let's look at an example here. This first example, I think, belongs in Quadrant one because the artist that appears to be using some very strong line work that they then colored in and rendered with fairly great detail to give us this image of this bird and in the second example, is a painting off these two birds and in quadrant to, uh, the style will tend to be much more painterly because in a painterly style you tend to render shapes quite a bit. But it's not dependent on lines because it's dependent on the changes and values, and that's what gives it a painterly look. You'll see that the edges of these little birds are not clearly defined, but you can tell where the that is a bird because of the change from like the black and the white to you, the light blues. In this example, um, it's also lying independent because the edges of the shapes are, um, clear because of the changes in color. So, for example, like bright pink to the grey shows, Okay, this is probably a suggestion that this is the bird's wing. And unlike Quadrant two, however, there's a lot of there is a lot of texture, but not a lot of, um, rendering in that they're the bird seems relatively flat, and that seems intentional. But depth is portrayed based on layering, so there's like a leaf in front of the bird, which is in front of the flower. And in this last example, we have a piece that is lying dependent because with if you just imagine, without those lines around the three birth characters, we probably wouldn't be able to tell exactly what it waas, and the coloring is also quite flat. So in the next few videos, we're going to go into more depth into each one of these quadrants, and you will kind of explore each one to see if there is one that you tend to gravitate
4. Quadrant 1: So let's take a look at Quadrant one, which is a combination of rendered and lying dependent art. So I picked a few more examples of artists I think belong in this category. And even though they have all very different styles, I think what they have in common is they have pretty clean artwork that is, they generally color inside of the lines, and you can kind of see where those lines are. And that's why I again generalizing this group, uh, artists as like the colorists, because they all have very beautiful coloring work. The general process wore This style is that artists will tend to start with a rough sketch that they clean up into Leinart and then in from the Leinart, though color in again, generally staying inside of the lines, a color and the base colors, and spend quite a bit of time on that on this last step of like rendering an outing texture um, to the base colors. So if you are a digital artist, you are likely to, um, have very organized layers. You'll have, like one layer for the Leinart one layer for the base colors. Um, you have one layer for coloring in Maybe like this animal. Another alert for coloring in this other animal, and you might utilize later masks and things like that. Um, if you are in traditional artist, you probably enjoy watercolors and working kind of in a small scale painting, like in a watercolor journal. You might also, like, wash and, um, mix, mixing those media's with colored pencils or and things like that. Again, I am doing a lot of generalizations. If what I'm saying doesn't necessarily resonate with you, that doesn't mean that you aren't this. Uh, This can't be your style of art. So remember to take everything I say with a grain of salt.
5. Quadrant 2: So now let's talk about Quadrant two, which is a combination of rendered and lying independent art. When you combine rendered online independent work, Um, you tend to get a very painterly style. Hence why I call this Group B Painters and I tried Teoh wrap a few examples of the different ways a painterly style might look, depending on what kind of media you choose. For example, in the first example, um, this is a, I believe, is this oil painting. But it could be it could be a acrylic. The 2nd 1 is, um, digital, and the last one is watercolor. But the general process for the style, I think, is more or less the same. I think painters tend to start with a rough sketch that they usually don't simplify terms, right? I usually don't like clean up into Leinart. They'll just go straight in first on base colors, and from there they'll paint over and render a bit more. And in general there's It's a more rendering, But many painters will usually leave a bit of abstraction, and there is a less clear, like foreground and background. Um, that's defined by lines. Rather, they look for edges. And, um, if you are a digital painter, you probably don't feel the need to use too many layers. And if you do use to and if you do use our multiple layers, they aren't necessarily organized by Leinart and this specific color. They might be organized by, like utilizing different layer settings, like putting one layer on color dodge or something like that. And if you are traditional artists, you probably will really enjoy acrylic and oil painting on large scales. Or maybe not large scales. But your process is a bit more time consuming in terms of the rendering component of adding more shadows and lights. So again, take everything I say with a grain of salt and let's go talk about order and three.
6. Quadrant 3: So now let's take a look at Quadrant three, and what does it look like to makes flat coloring and line independency? When you mix these two components, you get a graphic style that emphasises color and shape. And that's why I call this group that designers. You'll notice that among these examples that I pulled, the shadows are intentionally flat, as are the textures, and the pattern lines are still used, but in general, there used sparingly and not necessarily to outline any form, and as a result, they get this kind of paper cut out like quality to the style. And the general process, for the style can vary quite a bit from artists artists. But I summarized what I think might be a good representation of what most of the artists in this category do. Like every other artists will start off with a rough sketch. We'll fill in that rough, scheduled some base colors, and here is the biggest difference. I think they will remove the sketch afterwards, and from here refined have textures, patterns and details. Digital artists in this style, my also be interested in graphic design or vector illustration. That kind of has this similar flat, uh, layer quality. And traditional artists will likely seek out art supplies that layer well and have little transparency. So, for instance, will probably prefer a acrylics or quash or acrylic wash over water colors again generalizing. But maybe this describes you. If not, uh, let's talk about Quadrant four.
7. Quadrant 4: in this last category. Quadrant four. We're going to look at some examples of what happens when mixed lines with not occurring. I call this group the animators because pretty much every two D cartoon has this style, and you will also see the style In most comic books and graphic novels. And in the style, artists tend to have very beautiful and detailed and precise clean line work When they colored. They will prefer smooth colors and less texture in those colors. So going from light to dark in the radiance, for example, you'll notice that they can't have very smooth transitions. Otherwise, shadows and lights are also very much kind of like blocked in the general process for this style is that artists will like on the other artists start with a rough sketch. But unlike the other, artists will probably spend the most time on this step in the line. Art. Um, they will make sure they have good line variation and lying color, so that means that, like when they outline air work, they're not going to just like make it all black or something. Um, more skilled artists will likely have variation in color for the wine are in addition to when they actually color in their shape. They will fill in the base colors pretty neatly, and then they will add shadows and highlights and also maybe some patterns or textures also pretty neatly filled in. Digital artists in this group will likely be interested in animation. They might also be interested in writing or illustrating comic. Traditional artists in this category will likely enjoy finding supplies that produce a very like even smooth, clean coloring styles such as Gothic markers. So I hope those explanations of the Ford Broad categories was helpful to you. In the next video, we're going to talk about what you were. Project is.
8. Your Project/Final Thoughts: So for your project, I want you to choose an object or person or a landscape or something that you want to draw at least four times. So you are going to draw this exact same thing four times once per quadrant, and I want you to pay attention to what you would like about each quadrant or what you don't like about each quadrant, and see if you can notice any patterns. Do you enjoy doing a lot of line art, for example, or do you enjoy rendering a lot? Or do you prefer blocking in flat colors, thes air things that whatever medium you choose? Um, these are elements that could be consistent in your art style, no matter what medium you end up choosing? After that, I want you to just write a quick reflection on those four quadrants. And if you're feeling up for the challenge, draw the object of fifth time and combine various elements. Because no artist is usually like entirely one quadrant per se, it's important for you to kind of see like Do I actually want to try a mix of quadrant? I don't know, two and three and see like what might it look like if I were to mix some highly rendered are and some really flat um, shading. So after he figured out what quadrant you are leaning towards, it is helpful to find other artists that you really admire. That might also be in that same quadrant, because you can learn a lot from them and study their processes and techniques. Helps toe have some idea of what you want your heart to look like. Because art advice cause so subjective could be very conflicting. Where one artist is a painter might say, Yeah, avoid using black lines at all possible costs. And another artist is going to be like black lines are going to help make your art mawr dramatic. And all of this is about knowing what the rules are and learning how to break them. But if you have a general idea of what you ultimately are striving for, it helps you filter out what advice? Still, listen to
Yannan Shi, Digital Illustrator
