For those who want to get serious about the world of illustration, one of the first serious obstacles is finding a practical answer to the question “how do you find your own style?”
Maybe it was the decisive, personal, memorable style of some important signature that made you passionate about this activity. And for this reason you would like to quickly build your own: create a unique language that is undoubtedly recognizable among thousands of others.
I’ll give you some good news right away: finding your own personal illustration style is not as difficult as you might think. And it’s not the privilege of a few people with exceptional talent. As in any other field, you need to acquire the right skills and a solid method.
But before we see how you can build your voice through a few simple questions, let’s try to understand in practice what it consists of and why it is so important.
What does “illustrative style” mean?
We can give a definition of what illustration style is starting from two different points of view:
- That of the creator: for those who create illustrations, style is a direct reflection of how they see the world, and is therefore a very personal, almost intimate trait. It comes from the experiences that each one has accumulated and, precisely for this reason, it changes and evolves over time.
- The viewer’s: For the viewer of illustrations, an artist’s personal vision translates into a particular combination of colors, textures, choice of lines and shapes that recurs consistently in different works. Even if some of these elements change depending on the context and the subject, the style allows the viewer to recognize with good certainty who created an illustration.
Finding your own and building it is certainly a process that requires time and attention but does not require exceptional skills. In fact, I could tell you that your unique and personal illustration style already exists: all you have to do is ask yourself the right questions to recognize and define it.
Finding Your Illustration Style
To define your illustrative style in a very practical way I recommend three exercises, all of which consist of answering a question. They may seem very simple at first glance, but they guide you through an analysis step that allows you to immediately put the results into practice.
Let’s start with the first question, come on!
What do you like?
The first piece of advice I give you, obviously, is to “look” as much as possible, try to broaden your stimuli, and pay attention to everything that attracts your attention.
From here, try to take a step further in the direction of professionalism: in addition to looking with interest at everything that happens in the world of illustration, compare yourself with examples from the present and the past, explore other areas of image production, save everything.
Exactly, what I suggest you do is create an archive: a sort of large digital warehouse of images that you can use as a study tool. It can be a folder in the cloud, a Pinterest profile, an Excel sheet with a collection of links to which you can associate some information. It is not very important how you organize this archive, as long as it has some essential characteristics. It is better if it is:
- Sure: since it will require some work from you, it would be a real shame if it were to go to waste.
- Categorized: by year, color, artist? By platform the image comes from, scope of use, subject? It doesn’t matter what criteria you choose, but organize your images. The larger your archive, the harder it will be to find a specific item if you haven’t chosen an organization criterion.
Why do you like it?
When your archive starts to fill up, it’s time to study it. Gradually, take back the images you’ve saved and try to examine them , dismantle the various elements of style and try.
You may find that the color combination of some of them has struck you: in this case, try to understand if what interests you is the palette scheme, which could also work with other shades. On the contrary, it could be the dominant color shades that you find effective in communicating a message.
Apply the same method of analysis to all the components of the image: the stroke, the flow of the lines, some element of synthesis or stylization. It is quite probable that, if you analyze a good number of images, you will find at a certain point that some elements are repeated, at least by category.
You are now well on your way to understanding how to find and define your own illustration style. There is one last step left.
How do you define it?
At this point you have recognized a series of elements that return in many of the images that you have saved in your archive. It is time to move from the detail to an overall vision: collect the individual notes that you took in the previous phase and associate a general definition to these characteristics.
You will end up with a list of five, ten style elements… Guess what: you have just defined your illustration style! Or rather: you have found a solid starting point. Remember the phrase attributed to Picasso
“Mediocre artists copy, geniuses steal”
Copying means starting to retrace the same things that someone else has already done; without adding, without reworking, without contaminating.
On the contrary, “stealing” means , in a nutshell , studying : understanding how other professionals have found solutions to our same problems in order to learn how to do it.
At this point , move on to practice : try to combine in various ways the elements of style that you have identified. Add to these a choice of subjects, points of view that represent your way of being and of interpreting the reality that surrounds you.
With a little practice and experience, you will see your own illustration style emerge before your eyes.