As in many other fields, illustration is currently experiencing a crowded market. This is not surprising, considering that the modern world is largely built on the consumption of visual content. Therefore, the task of every illustrator who wants to succeed and stand out from the crowd is to have a style. It is no longer about the quality of skills, because to draw beautifully is not the same as to draw conceptually.
So how can I be different from others, what is the essence of my style – these are the questions an illustrator should ask himself.
The answer is hidden in the question itself and in each of us. In fact, each illustrator is a completely unique creative unit, with its own personal experience and view. It is our personality, identity that can help us find our style. Even such tiny, seemingly tiny details as our favorite drawing materials as children matter here. If you dig deeper, you’ll see that your love of sharp contours and flat fillings comes from fairy tale books with illustrations by Bilibin. And the combination of colors you often use is exactly like your mother’s dress, which you admired as a child.
How do you start working on your style?
The first thing you should do is to look through your work over the period of 1-5 years (it all depends on how long you have been drawing and how fast your progress in drawing has been) and select about 10 works in which you like something. It could be technique, materials, colors, line, maybe shading or composition. It is possible that you have experimented and never returned to this style again, but it has stuck in your heart.
Choose the most promising in your opinion directions from those that you have selected (it will be on average about three) and give them time. Find new references and paint in each style. You may find that you lack the skills to work with new material (so the technique was abandoned, but this is no reason not to develop), the style has no development (for example, you drew then without the use of green color, and now your gamut has become richer), the technique simply loses interest for you for personal reasons. Among all these offshoots you will still find something you want to work with.
This is where the time comes to analyze it. Perhaps if you are interested in the technique but lack the skill, it makes sense to spend more time to see a decent result in the long run.
The second thing you should do is to put together a collage of 9 works by different illustrators that you like the most at the moment.
Analyzing the collage, you will see the links between the works – this is the vector of your development. Do not take someone else’s style as a direct instruction to action, but it is not shameful to copy at the stage of search. The main condition of your copying is not to use copies for commercial purposes. Sometimes only after a couple of copies comes the realization of style and in the end, you will not continue to copy “from and up to” another illustrator, and borrow some expressive move. This is perfectly acceptable and would not be considered plagiarism.