March 4th - Voice
Luckily for me, my work usually allows me to multitask. I am capable (about 99% of the time) of listening to a podcast while I draw. My latest podcast obsession is “Creative Pep Talk”, hosted by Andy J. Pizza. If a podcast where a successful creative person shares his secrets and brings incredible guests in to share their secrets sounds good to you, I would highly recommend checking it out.
The episode I listened to yesterday was one of his many on finding your artistic voice.
This is something I’ve always struggled with. I have found that I like to do “too much”. I love oil painting and watercolor and acrylic and digital. I like clean, simple design and I like messy, carefree sketches. Finding my own specific style has been really difficult for me, and I’ve always wanted to discover it in a very independent way. I see it as strangely ‘embarrassing’ to pick up tricks from other artists - the last thing I want to do is copy someone else’s style. My “style” should be purely my own.
Andy did not exactly agree.
Finding your style comes from learning and experimenting - his point was that artists should always be learning and growing from other artists. If you see something that you love, don’t copy it word for word, stroke for stroke. But take something from it. Whether it’s how they used color, or the way the artist drew a nose, or how they implemented a textured background.
I’ve always loved prints that I’ve seen online of the alphabet. Lettering has been a huge part of my art in the last few years, and, lo and behold, the alphabet actually contains every single letter. I’ve never wanted to make my own alphabet print, though, because it felt “copycat”. After listening to Andy, I realized how silly that was.
This alphabet print is mine. I made it. I sketched it out first with a pencil and paper, and then transferred it to my iPad to clean it up digitally and add some color. I’m not the first artist to ever attempt a cohesive alphabet, and that’s okay. That doesn’t make it any less mine. The mere act of creating it is getting me closer to my own style.
