#immochiball

I’m launching a Kickstarter for these mochi emoji pins on August 22! ✨😊

Back again with news prints and a new color :) I even managed to print some with two different colors ! Thanks @immochiball who lets me use those amazing drawings and also gave me some advices/ideas about which colors I should use ;)

Hi @immochiball ! Welcome to my Tumblr!! I hope you don’t mind if I answer this publicly, since it’s a question that comes up every now and then and maybe other people will be interested too?

Okay, so for inspiration it’s pretty much just stuff I personally like. :D I keep a sketchbook and I doodle a lot - even if I’m not making good drawings and it’s just stream-of-consciousness doodling, sometimes there’s a kernel of an idea in there that I can refine later. Sometimes I make interesting mistakes that turn into more. Sometimes ideas sit in my sketchbook for years and go nowhere before I finally have the skill and means to execute them usefully and that’s okay. I think a big part of coming up with good ideas is taking away the pressure to make them “good” and letting yourself just do things until something sticks.

On the other hand, don’t be afraid to throw away something that doesn’t work! Don’t be afraid to put something on the backburner if it’s not quite right yet! Having a backlog of ideas that weren’t right at the time is useful for when you’re stuck in the present. I delve into my old sketchbooks a lot! Just don’t be mean to yourself - “this isn’t ready yet” is different to “this is bad”. The latter is a self-own, don’t listen to it.

And of course, surround yourself with the works of others (and nature). Surely you will find things that inspire you! I get a lot out of bad movies and books because my brain goes into overdrive generating ideas to “fix” them lol. I’m also inspired by all the incredible artists I see on the internet and of the past. And animal anatomy and behaviour is awesome.

As far as style goes… I think that’s something that happens naturally and partly it’s an illusion Style is ultimately just a culmination of an artist’s personal tastes and inherent ticks. Most parts of style are by choice - I like drawing oval faces, I think they’re cute, so I do that a lot for the Tiny Pantheon style for example. Some bits of style are unintentional though - an artist with shaky hands might use thick linework to reduce the stutter in their lines or an artist who’s left handed might subconsciously make different composition choices than a right-handed artist.

But MOST of “style” is by choice ie. engineered. You can choose to draw however you like. Which is all I do. I make sure I’m exposed to lots of art, I do my best to ask myself what I like and why and how I can take advantage of the answer and then I use that knowledge. It’s also useful to ask yourself what OTHER people see in the works they do or don’t like and how you can use that. Art is a set of problems to be solved every time!! And there is many many solutions. Every time you sit down to draw you get to make a bunch of interesting choices.

Sometimes if you’re stuck for inspiration it helps to focus on choices like shapes, colours, line weight first, instead of your subject.

I get bored drawing just one way so if you take a squiz through my work you’ll see a bunch of different styles and mediums. I probably do have some notable tics that I carry from style to style too though! We all do.

Anyway, there’s no wrong answer with style really but there is right questions. What do you want to accomplish with your style? Do you want to make one distinctive style that everyone will recognise as yours and base your career on that? Do you prefer to be a chameleon who can accomplish many things? Do you want to draw sexy? Do you want to communicate clear body language in your drawings? Do you want to be FAST? These are all great avenues that lead to interesting places and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. It’s really just down to what you want to do!