Being new to drawing, one thing I was going to eventually have to do was “discover” my style. Well, I don’t know if I’d call it “discover”, since I thought and plotted it out. However, it’s pretty true to my identity and other things I have done in that past that was visually artistic. The drawings below illustrate my points. They are line drawings of nudes so please do not continue if you do not wish to view them or are not in a place where they can be viewed without criticism.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEFgCEqRYD9/?taken-by=pixelcollage

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEH8DaVxYAe/?taken-by=pixelcollage

The drawing is not an original by me. It’s a redrawing of a gesture drawing Tom Young did of me. I wanted to use my new art style for a profile picture so to have a picture of someone else, even if it were my art, was less preferable to me than a picture of me by someone else. Everything else about it is indicative of my first art style. The top version is coloured with water colour pencils, but with the water not yet added. The second has the water added. I will have some future art looking more like the first style with thinner and cleaner lines, but also some like the second look that’s softer than the first.

For starters, keep it simple. I do detailed life drawings but for this art style, I can’t use details. Besides, details stuff meant to look realistic have little monetary value in the art world. You’re like a third rate camera doing that so people are just going to opt for photos. Sentimental value like someone caring to draw you counts, but not much more than that. I want to keep things simple with large lines and few of them, even if maybe not quite like in this style here, but it wouldn’t be far from that or stock illustrations you can find.

With each black line, assign it a shadow or highlight edge. For shadows, shade with a dark colour. For highlights, shade with a light colour. I shaded everything on the inside but perhaps in the future, I’ll shade the highlight on the outside, or sometimes on the outside as should be.

Use as many colours as I have, or select sets of colours. Those three things are all there is to it! I’ll do more playing around with the colouring but you get the gist of it.

Gist is something big in my personality, though I can do the heck out of details when I need to. It’s just not my nature.

A system as I have to the style is definitely in with my identity that is all about systems!

High contrast is definitely in my design style of everything, as well as my sometimes deviant nature rather than average in the middle of the road nature.

There are also lots of colours, but not to the point of overwhelming and psychedelic, like my personality metaphorically. 🙂

Three colour combinations, often with white as a colour like red-white-blue, are also in my visual arts DNA. My clothes often have three colour combinations on them like many sport teams have three colour combinations, not to mention flags. The black is a must so in a way, the three colour combination is black-white-colour. The fact I use as many colours as I can means I can explore many great black-white-colour tricolour sets. Those tricolour sets are very popular in the world, and the ones that are not, like black-white-pink or black-white-lime, tend to be refreshing to the eye.

The looks here are with oil pastels in black and water colour pencils otherwise on white paper. It’s a bit organic looking and not as sharp as could be. That’s not quite me as I’m more about corporate looking and mathematically pure sharpness. However, in the future, I will probably be using China markers or Sharpie permanent markers rather than the oil pastels unless I’m going for a soft look like for some female models.

So while I might have thought and plotted out this art style, it’s pretty much genuinely me rather than something planned that says little about me. I also happen to be a methodical planner who is fierce about being true to my identity, who I know I am and with whom I’m very comfortable, even if that identity is a constantly evolving one.