How to Create a Consistent Art Style
There is one particular question that tends to come up a lot when I’m talking to beginner and emerging artists that want to start growing their audience and making more art sales online.
“How do I find my style?”
It’s a very common question, and its one that my usual answer for doesn’t make them all that happy.
But that’s not the question they usually start with – in fact they usually begin by asking “Do I need an art style?”
And my answer to that is “Yes. Yes you do.”
And a quick look at really any successful artist out there that does make an income off their artwork will show you that they do have a consistent and defined art style of their own.
So yes, you will need an art style if you would like to be a successful artist.
Today we are going to chat today about 4 things that you can do to create a more consistent art style of your own.
1) Be Prolific (Create a LOT of Art)
The first way to increase the consistency of your art style is to be VERY prolific.
This means painting a lot. Drawing a lot. Sculpting a lot.
Whatever you do for your form of artwork, do it A LOT.
Developing an art style comes with experience.
Now, experience doesn’t have to be tied to a time period. It doesn’t have to be “I’ve been painting for 5 years” or “I’ve been drawing for two-and-a-half decades”.
Instead it can be energy spent, projects completed, or even paintings completed.
If you only complete one painting per month, it’s inevitably going to take you a lot longer to develop a consistent art style.
But, let’s say you were going to complete one painting a day, or 3 paintings a week – whatever manages to fit into your schedule – you’ll then see how someone can create a lot more art in that time.
They’re going to gain a lot more experience in that period of time, and they’re going to develop their personal art style a lot faster than someone that only creates one painting per month that may take them 20 hours.
On the other hand you may have someone that is creating 10 paintings per month, and maybe they even all add up to 20 hours of painting time in a month, but because they are having the opportunity to create more art, they are going to be able to develop their art style more quickly.
Do whatever you have to do to be more prolific.
If that means that you start creating smaller paintings rather than larger paintings so that you can create more of them, then create more paintings.
If it means that you need to carefully schedule your time so you have an hour of each day to create art, then whip out the schedule.
Perhaps you even complete a challenge of sorts.
There are so many challenges out there – for instance there is the very popular Inktober, which is a month-long challenge throughout October where huge communities of artists create daily artwork based on prompts with ink.
Do some research on ideas for challenges, or just create your own.
It doesn’t have to be creating a piece of artwork for a month straight – it can be 7 days, 30 days, 100 days. It doesn’t even have to be daily artwork if you don’t think that it will be sustainable for your lifestyle.
The important part is that you intend to be prolific.
2) Being Intentional With What You Create Art Of
The second way to get consistent with your art style is by being intentional with what you create.
Before you whip out your paints in the heat of the moment – fueled by a fiery burst of inspiration – I want you to take a moment to ask yourself whether or not what you’re about to create is going to serve your efforts to get clear on your art style.
Being able to take that extra moment and analyze whether or not spending the next hour, 5 hours, 50 hours – whatever it takes – is spending that time on this art that I thought of in this flurry of inspiration, is it actually going to help me? Or is it a symptom of Shiny Object Syndrome?
What you can do is ask yourself if there is a way that you can take that inspiration, and use it in such a way that it does benefit you. So that it does work towards strengthening the consistency of your art style.
Let’s say you just watched a movie that you fell in love with, and you desperately wanted to create some fan art.
But what if that portrait that you want to do doesn’t flow with the rest of your artwork?
Since we are focusing right now on how to get consistent with your art style, it’s an important question that you should be asking yourself.
If you are still excited about creating that particular piece of art based on that flurry of inspiration, is there a way that you can change it so that it does flow with your art style?
I want you to ponder how this is going to look to your audience for a moment.
Imagine that your favorite author of all time came out with a new book that was completely different from anything else that they have written.
What would be going through your mind?
Let’s say they have written a high-fantasy series that you completely fell in love with, but then they release another book that is true crime based on a true story. A book that has nothing to do with high-fantasy, nothing in common with the previous books that you loved.
You’d probably be a bit put off by this. It would feel like a different author wrote it, and would be completely disjointed from anything else they have created.
Keep this in mind when you are developing your own art style.
3) Create an Art Series or Collection
The next way that you can begin to get consistent with your art style is to create an art series or collection.
Now this does go alongside being intentional with what you create, but here we are creating more of a plan for success.
An art series or collection is exactly that – a collection of artwork that belongs together in a series.
It has a centralized theme, whether that be subject, color, medium, story, meaning, etc.
What’s beautiful and powerful about art collection is that when done properly, especially when you are making an effort to develop and nurture an art style, is that it can create a wonderfully strong image.
Let’s say you are creating an art series where the subjects are all garden flowers, or a specific animal. Or perhaps you’re creating an art series that has a variety of animals, but they are all created using only 3 main colors of paint.
Here you have a theme of wildlife but it will look super consistent because you are using the same color palette for the entire series.
Your art collections can get more abstract in theme – creating it based on a story, impact – that doesn’t have a strong visual tie between them, but this can create a struggle for artists that don’t yet have their own defined art style.
If you are still in that phase of your artist journey where you’re trying to nail down what your art style is, I highly recommend choosing color and subject for your art style.
Art series or collections are also amazing because as you are creating them you can take your audience along for the ride on social media.
People love seeing artwork in progress – they love seeing snap shots of your studio space, or that half-finished painting.
4) Create Artwork of Something You Love
One more thing that you can do to create more consistency in your art style is to choose something that you love, and create lots of art of it.
The reason why is because this is going to fuel you through the repetitive nature of trying to find and refine your art style.
This tends to be a struggle for a lot of beginner artists, because art is exciting to them in that phase and because of that they easily fall prey to Shiny Object Syndrome. Jumping from style to style, subject to subject, medium to medium.
And this is okay – it’s part of finding yourself as an artist.
But keep in mind that developing a strong and consistent art style is one of the keys for becoming a successful artist.
By choosing something that you love to create art of, this is going to carry you through that repetitive nature of creating an art collection that helps you to define your art style.
For instance, if your art collection is going to contain 10 to 20 paintings of the same subject, you’d better love that subject or you’ll quit after 3 paintings.
The other benefit to choosing something that you love is that you will never run out of things to say about that particular thing that you adore.
That communication and storytelling is one of the key things to growing a passionate audience that LOVES you artwork.
So those are 4 of my favorite ways that you can start to get consistent with your art style.
I just want to remind you of something there – it doesn’t happen overnight.
This is a process.
It takes time. It takes experience.
Don’t beat yourself up if you still feel like your style is being illusive – stay consistent and it will come to you in time.
Want to take an even bigger flying leap towards your (inevitable) success as an artist?
Watch my FREE masterclass training, Scale Your Art Sales.
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