I was drawing diagrams for the book this week and realized something that made me rethink my understanding of style. I’m going to have to make a few hundred of them and I can already see a difference between the ones I made a month ago and now. So the diagrams at the end of the book will be at a higher quality level than the ones in the beginning.
Turns out you can’t pick a style and produce the same art every time. The style is a combination of your taste, your current skill, your tools and thousands of micro-decisions you make without noticing.
That doesn’t mean it’s out of your control though. The style is an output, just like muscles are the output of training. And people still write training programs, they just aim at the inputs instead.
What you look at is what you make
Taste is the part of you that makes you go “wow” at some things and “ew” at others. It adjusts every time something has an impression on you.
When you spend 2 hours scrolling a feed that’s built to hold your attention, that’s what you’re training on. And usually it isn’t picking the highest quality things to show you.
That’s why I’m such a big proponent of not following or engaging with anyone who you don’t want to be like. I don’t follow that rule perfectly but I still try to limit what I consume.
So the next time you see an amazing artwork in your feed, save it somewhere you can find it again, and follow the artist. And when you see a post trying to ragebait you for engagement, don’t just scroll past, actually right click it and press “not interested” or mute the account.
Copy what’s far away from you
I used to think that copying was evil, but actually it’s the best way to bring your art to the next level.
Copying work that already looks like yours teaches you almost nothing, you end up with a slightly better version of what you could already do. Copying work that’s far from your comfort zone forces you to learn new techniques, and that’s the actual material your style is built out of.
I realized that when I started studying how to draw and render clothes. I was following a course that taught a completely new approach for me, and it affected not only how I draw clothes but my whole outlook on shading in general. My style evolved.
What I did with the book
So back to the diagrams.
I can’t freeze my skill for the whole year and I wouldn’t want to, so the consistency has to come from constraints.
I locked two variables for the book illustrations – color and line. I already defined a color palette that will pretty much never change, and picked a single brush at a fixed size that I’ll do everything with.
This works outside of books too. Constraints will make your work recognizable, because you’re forced to solve every problem with the same tools.
So don’t try to hold your style still to keep it recognizable. Just curate your inputs, pick your constraints, and let the rest of it evolve naturally.
