#tinycrabgarden

sdkgjhkdsf thank you that’s a very thoughtful comment?? I’m a little sheepish bc I’m not currently happy with my style right now and I’ve been doing a lot of studies to evolve it a little more. actually this works out great bc i can share my process for developing and curating a style - which is basically what i’ve been doing for the last few months!! 

First off: to me, style is just another way of saying “artistic shorthand.” basically, after a few dozen times of drawing the same thing over and over, you start to take shortcuts in your rendering. you’ll notice a stylization naturally start to appear as you put what you’re seeing through the filter of your brain and your hands. this is why one way to develop a style is to start by drawing things from reference, then slowly start to phase the references out and rely more and more on your mental visualization. not only will this help you understand your own brain and how you process things, it will also give you a great foundation for drawing things from your imagination! 

another great way to practice style is by copying artists that you really like. the trick is to do it mindfully. when you find a piece of art that you really like, try to dissect why you like it. is it the color scheme? the weight or tambre of the lines? the texture or pattern? a particular way of rendering facial features? take notes while you do this! once you know these things you can begin to start reproducing them. 

also, study art that you wouldn’t normally consume. artists who are animators can teach you a lot about shapes and motion, and artists who are comic illustrators can teach you a lot about inking and shading. not only is there value in figuring out what you don’t like and why, you might also be surprised at what you end up liking! plus, the more you learn, the more appreciation you have for art of all different styles! This is how i found amazing artists like vintage-foods and floralmarsupial - not what i would go looking for per se, but fell in love with once i found them.

for me personally, i realized that i like analogous red-purple-blue color schemes (meyoco, heikala, anna cattish, anonbea), areas of dense detail contrasted with areas of smoothness (mangalho, littleulvar, choodraws, takato yamamoto, petra erika nordlund, sara kipin) and smooth painterly shading with saturated undertones (vickisigh, atissi, gdbee, japhers, horreurscopes). (really anyone i follow on instagram!!) 

of course! 

Thank you so much!!! I am really proud of how those four turned out. It makes me happy that people like them!!!