How to find your 'Style'

"Mistra Bay" soft pastels

 "How do I find my style?" is a question I am often asked by students who have reached a certain level of accomplishment and wonder how to take it further. Wanting to have a recognisable style is only natural really when it comes to creating art. Most of us would like to make our mark and have people notice that it stands out as ours and no-one else’s.

Style had not crossed my mind until I was caught – yet again – in Harrow Art College’s first year life class instead of with the rest of the third year, working on my diploma show. Our head of year, Charles Bartlett (RIP) was endlessly frustrated by my inability to stick to deadlines and briefs. On this occasion he told me, loudly, that my work looked like that of an extremely talented art student. I was quite surprised, and flattered, until he continued to say that unless I adopted a ‘style’ I would never succeed as a commercial artist. 

He told me to go and find an artist that I admired and copy their style until I found one of my own.
I was quite outraged! Here I was trying really hard to reproduce what I saw and he was telling me that it was so hopeless I should copy someone else? I missed his point at the time, of course.

'Quartet' Painted live at the Malta Jazz Festival 2015. Acrylics on paper 70 x 50 cms 270 euro

live sketch from 'Dance Hybrid' workshops July 2016. watercolour on paper 50 x 35 cms 27 euro

​ I had chosen to study Illustration at Harrow  because at the time Fine Arts courses in the UK had ceased to teach techniques in favour of self-expression and experimentation. I loved the first two years of pure drawing, but when it came to creating full page spreads and doing as I was told, I retreated back to the first year’s drawing sessions. I would hide in the photography dark rooms rather than bother with the typography press. I made a train necklace out of tiny etching plates instead of making prints. Oh dear, poor Mr Bartlett. He was trying to help me make a living of course; I needed to compete with hundreds of other equally talented people in the cut throat advertising world. I left college and failed miserably. Or happily, whichever way you look at it. I still don’t do as I’m told.
I now understand what he meant, but I still don’t agree.

There’s always a lot to be learned from studying another artist’s style. It’s good to try and feel the way someone else might have approached a subject, how they held their brush, mixed their colours, how they built up an image or found their inspiration. It is very valuable to let a different approach enrich your own.

'Wall, limits of Bidnija', watercolour. Picture 50 x 70 cms, framed to 75 x 95 cms. 850 euro

I really think that ‘style’ just creeps up on you though. It is born of confidence in your technique and materials. Of practice and experience and just plain hours of slog. And mainly of many, many failures.  It comes when you stop worrying about the end result and just get on and have another bash. It develops over time and you don’t even notice it until someone says ‘oh I knew that was one of yours’ and you notice that you’ve actually found your own voice quite by accident. ​