Finding and developing your art style

The most asked question through all my years of teaching art is: how do I develop my own art style? With some it becomes an almost obsessive struggle to find their own unique style ASAP – because then they might stand a change of achieving success in the art world – at least that is what is widely believed. This type of obsession kills your passion for art and will lead to disappointment and failure!

I think the origin of this believe is strongly influenced by the stereotypical depictions of the struggling artist that suddenly have a creative “Eureka!” moment that leads to the artist developing a revolutionising new personal style and then attaining instant lasting fame. Sadly this is a skewed depiction of most roads to success for the artist. This stereotype has led many talented artists to give up on their passion for art because the pressure to develop their own style handicapped them into not developing at all. It is like a young greenhouse plant that is not fully sprouted hanging its little head because it is not blooming or bearing fruit – instead of pushing its energy into growing strong roots it is focusing all its energy into non-existing flowers and fruits.

Maybe the quest to find your own style is also your stumbling block in developing your art talent. Just like the plant you first need to focus your energy on developing strong roots that can sustain you when you reach your full potential to keep blossoming wonderfully! Remember when you started out learning to write? Everyone in the class was diligently practicing to form the letter “a” on paper with lines and lines of the same letter repeating until it came to resemble the example of the teacher as closely as possible. Eventually the letter becomes a word and the word became sentences and paragraphs. And while everybody learned to write the exact same script by the end of their schooling everybody had developed their own uniquely recognizable handwriting…thus, the developing of an own style happened spontaneously! So why are we clinging to the idea that developing your own art style can only happen if we constantly chase it using willpower and determination? Let go of this entangling concept that are like a weed suffocating your art-plants growth.

For your art-plant to grow you need to practice art every day – without the unrealistic goals (e.g. that every piece must be a masterpiece) –art thrive when it’s created while enjoying in the creative process. The joy or passion of the creative process is like the sunlight for your art – giving you energy to keep going! And the added benefit is that with every art product you create you develop your technique and skill within the medium you’re using – so even if it is not a masterpiece – you are still growing! Remember, don’t compete with other artists – each has their own journey to blossom – and some blossom sooner than others, but each flower has its own beauty!

A plant also needs food – especially pot plants that need to be given extra food in summer and less in winter, depending on the type of plant – similarly your art-plant needs feeding. Finding inspiration by looking at other artist work is great but, not every hour of every day – that is the same as over feeding your pot plant! Just a little bit to inspire you to try a new technique or medium or explore a new idea. So remember that sometime less is more – too much of a good thing becomes harmful because it leads us to feel overwhelmed and frustrated while a little bit would have energized us to go out and explore all those new ideas! Also, most times we just see the successful artworks on social media, not the hundred trials and errors that that artist went through to produce a successful piece. We forget that most often people do not show their failures nor their real struggles – some will add a little glimpse of their struggle but that is mostly to give the viewers and potential buyers something to relate with them and to give their art an interesting memorable story – thus a marketing tool, not the real fight. I suggest you limit your time and the frequency you look at other artists work, just set a time that keeps you energized and inspired!

A plant also needs water, of course, to grow. We can link the watering of the plant to the people encouraging you in your art journey – family, friends, mentors and teachers. I encourage my students to share their work – find a platform on social media that are encouraging and have constructive advice – not critique, because we are often critical enough of our own work but don’t know how to correct the little mistakes we see in our work. But we can become blind for problems if we never have critique. Critique from somebody else, especially another artist whose opinion we value, is also necessary – this can be compared to storms ravaging the plant. Storm lead to reflection and regrowth – changing the direction of growing or encouraging new possibilities for growth we haven’t previously considered. If the storm was particularly damaging we might need to replant and prune the plant. In terms of art, this sometimes mean you have to take a step back and reevaluate you art process: deciding which aspects of your art process and product works and which don’t and what changes are needed to continue developing. Sometimes making a complete U-turn in your approach to your art, for example Piet Mondrian embracing geometric shapes by disregarding any natural form in order to make his artwork more universal like mathematics – this leading to him developing his own style! The developing of his own style was not his goal, but the natural result in his quest to make sense of the world and making art understandable to everybody who has learned the specific meaning of the geometric forms and their color.

Piet Mondrian, Spring Sun (Lentezon): Castle Ruin: Brederode, c. late 1909 – early 1910, oil on masonite, 62 × 72 cm, Dallas Museum of Art.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40205551

Piet Mondrian, Evening; Red Tree (Avond; De rode boom), 1908–1910, oil on canvas, 70 × 99 cm, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

By Piet Mondrian - Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37629457

Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930, Kunsthaus Zürich

By Piet Mondrian - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37642803

Let’s look at a few other famous artists’ journey to develop their own recognizable style:

Frida Kahlo – she started painting after a dreadful bus accident that left her bedridden for 3 months at the age of 18. Initially she painted herself since it was the only model she had available to work from – they had installed a mirror above her bed for her to look at while she painted her self-portrait exploring questions of identity and existence. Later in her career she continues using self-portraits as a means to explore her internal struggle and her surroundings, including Mexican flowers and animals, while seeking answers to who she is and where she belongs. Her art was not an obsessive search to develop her own style but rather a manner in which she could overcome her personal fight for survival and health. Today she is remembered for her honest depictions and struggles of being a woman with a career.

Frida Kahlo, “Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress”, 1926 by Frida Kahlo. Courtesy of www.FridaKahlo.org

Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” (1940), Harry Ransom Center

By Frida Kahlo - Lloyd, Brigitte Gastel. &quot;Portrait of the Artists&quot;. artroots.com., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3518151

Frida Kahlo, “Without Hope”, 1945 by Frida Kahlo
Courtesy of www.FridaKahlo.org

Vincent van Gogh – his first artworks document the hardship of the miners where he was a missionary. The works show this hardship using impure color and emphasizes the harshness of the living circumstances of these people with many wrinkles and dark clothes eating in a small dark one-room house with only a single light that does not give enough light by which to eat – suggesting the powerless and hopeless state of the inhabitants that are desperate to survive. With his desire to express himself through his art we find that he starts using more and more color – and after meeting the Impressionists – the color and short brushstrokes become the characteristics we associate with his art today. He also found inspiration in Japanese woodcut prints that he used to explore composition with, basing many of his paintings on Japanese compositions. He never stopped learning and exploring art, but he always made it his own! Today he is recognized as one of the most famous artist of all time. Not because he focused al his energy on developing his own style but rather striving to become better at communicating his ideas through painting that ultimately led to him developing his own style!

Vincent van Gogh, “The Potato Eaters”, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=334091

Vincent van Gogh, “Red Vineyard”, November 1888. Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Sold to Anna Boch, 1890 (The only painting Vincent van Gogh is certainly known to have sold during his lifetime.)
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=334091

Vincent van Gogh, “Road with Cypress and Star”, May 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
By Vincent van Gogh – Own work in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2702442

I hope this article helps you overcome your struggle to develop a unique style and get you going out to make art! I believe that everybody that takes care of their art-plant will in time flower beautifully. Enjoy every moment of the creative journey!

The Art of Byzantine.

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Byzantine Art can be divided into three distinct periods: Early Byzantine started around 300 to 750 AD, the Middle Byzantine period around 850 to 1204; and the Late Byzantine period lasted from 1261 to 1453. Most of the art produced during this time was related to the Christian Church. The Church commissioned most of the artworks, thereby dictating the norm for what was acceptable or taboo. From the very started of Early Christian Art, the question would remain whether an image was acceptable or not and at what point do an image become an idol? The artists of the times solution, that was deemed acceptable by the Church, was to focus less on the physical realm and more on the spiritual realm. Artist started to abandon Classical conventions like shading, perspective, illusions of any kind related to the natural world and any individual characteristics in their illustrations of the Biblical figures. Still not fully satisfied with the artist solutions, this question would eventual lead to the Iconoclast at the end of the Early Byzantine period.
During the Iconoclast, some scholars like Augustine, argued that all illustrations was lies and therefor was intolerable since it promoted the use of lies in the Church that was supposed to preach Truth. By 800 AD, the Iconoclast ended, when the scholars of the Church decided that images may be used to educate the illiterate mass, but the style and appearance was strictly prescribed to become almost abstract with no natural illusion of space and rather two-dimensional depictions of people, animals and objects that just barely resemble the physical objects. With these restrictions, the Church no longer had to worry about idolatry.

The Early Byzantine period started in 330 AD, when the first Christian ruler, Constantine, took over Rome. He moved the main city from Rome to the “new Rome” that was to become known as Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey) – an important trade city during ancient times with its own harbour. During his reign, the Christian religion becomes the official religion in Constantinople. This facilitated the dissemination of the new religion to the distant corners of the Empire, as far as Egypt. During this period, numerous Churches were built, including the Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Basilica of San Vitale (Ravenna, Italy). Many of these Churches also had monasteries were literate monks spend much of their time copying manuscripts that is known as Illuminati. An important further development by the monks was the Codex – bounded manuscripts – that replaced the ancient scrolls.
Most of the church buildings include a dome and glittering mosaics that narrate the Bible to the illiterate masses. The use of gold inside the church buildings along with candelabra and the few window openings manipulated the natural light to brighten the dark building – creating a mood that subdue people into a spiritual realm and ensuring that people understand that God is the Light in the dark world.

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Middle Byzantine period follows the Iconoclast, with renewed enthusiasm to building churches that are smaller in scale than the Hagia Sophia is but also includes domes and richly decorated interiors. Frescoes and mosaics are used to decorate the ceilings and domes of the churches. It is the illustrations inside the curves that create the most drama within the narrative. This use of the physical space and juxtaposing images to work together demonstrate a thorough knowledge, understanding and excellent planning of arranging images to create the narrative.
The floor plans of these churches are increasingly based on a centralised cross-inside-a-square. A plan that was to become synonymous with the Byzantine Art. Later the exterior of these churches are also adorned, a beautiful example of this is, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Greece.

During the Middle Byzantine period, the Christian religion spreads to the Slavic nations. Russia accepts the Orthodox Christianity during the 10th century leading to new inspiration in the art – beautiful iconography paintings of saints.
The supreme authority of the Pope from the Latin Church of Western Europe would eventually lead to the crumbling of the Byzantine Empire. The small remnant of the Byzantine Empire in Nicaea was all that remained of the once magnificent and strong kingdom.

Fresco from Hosios Loukas monastery in Boeotia, Greece.

(Images from Wikipedia)

The Late Byzantine period can be found in two separate Realms: one includes Constantinople with provinces in the north and central parts of Greece and south to Peloponnesus; and the other at Trebizond in the east. These Realms finally ended in the mid-15th century when the Turks invaded them, Trebizond was the last to fall in 1460.
During the final years of the Byzantine Empire, even though they were desperately holding on defending on all sides and with extremely limited funds their art flourished. New buildings were erected, old ones restored and newly decorated with monumental scale narratives, iconography and church adornments. One of these buildings that was restore and enlarged was the Hagia Sophia. Other example is the Choro Cloister in Constantinople, here they used more economical mediums, replaced expensive metals with cheaper ones and used glass or coloured stones instead of precious minerals.
Even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, their standards for beauty would persistently influence the Latin Western Empire’s ideal of art. The new masters of Constantinople, Islam, also continued to inspire the West.