07-31-2015, 12:13 AM
The best advice I can give on this subject is to ignore it. When you say "this is my style" you cut yourself off from making the best art that you can. Style should always be freely made creative choices you make in order to make the best image possible. When you impose style over your work, you are applying constraints where you no longer have the mobility to make all those creative choices, leading to a worse potential outcome.
When people say that style should come naturally, they don't mean that you should pick a style you naturally feel drawn to. Rather they mean that style should be the accumulation of your creative choices across different works.
If you can only do work within the parameters of a style or a few styles, you naturally will only get jobs within those parameters. If you are really good within those parameters and there is an active demand for things of that kind, you will get a lot of work. If you either aren't very good or there isn't a market for it, you won't get work.
If you can work in very broad parameters, you open yourself up to more job opportunities. When you're well established you don't need this broad spectrum of work and if you'd like, you can narrow your sights and focus on a certain kind of work, get way better at that and cash in big because you're now one of the best (let's say) sci-fi illustrators on the market.
I strongly disagree smrr here. Art directors will not naturally need you. If there isn't a market for the things you do, you will not get work. Rapoza demonstrated that there was a market for his kind of work, art directors and marketing people noticed that and decided to cash in. If there is no pre-existing interest, you will find it very very difficult to make anyone swallow your style. Anyone hiring your for it is then taking a big risk. If it's successful, you win big but if it isn't, you loose.
You can be the best art nouveau artist on the block but very few people will hire you. This is simple business. Supply and demand. If you're a well established artist you can sometimes create a demand by demonstrating your product but this isn't something that happens all that often to people early in their careers.
A little off topic but if you want to be better prepared for a career in art, take business and marketing courses. Artists suck at the business side of things and those with even modest skills in this win out (Noah Bradley, Anthony Jones etc.). Look over the things Noah Bradley does and try and dissect how he markets himself. I don't even like the guy that much but he does understand marketing fairly well. The "Don't go to Art School" thing blew up and I'd bet you that he knew it would. A provocative title, a large audience of students trying to self teach, bad formal art education all over the world, a lot of under-skilled and frustrated students in said schools, a booming business for online art education sources and several self taught artists that are very popular now. It was a perfect setup for his article and he nailed it. It's this kind of stuff you can do if you want to be a "man/woman of the people" when it comes to art.
When people say that style should come naturally, they don't mean that you should pick a style you naturally feel drawn to. Rather they mean that style should be the accumulation of your creative choices across different works.
If you can only do work within the parameters of a style or a few styles, you naturally will only get jobs within those parameters. If you are really good within those parameters and there is an active demand for things of that kind, you will get a lot of work. If you either aren't very good or there isn't a market for it, you won't get work.
If you can work in very broad parameters, you open yourself up to more job opportunities. When you're well established you don't need this broad spectrum of work and if you'd like, you can narrow your sights and focus on a certain kind of work, get way better at that and cash in big because you're now one of the best (let's say) sci-fi illustrators on the market.
I strongly disagree smrr here. Art directors will not naturally need you. If there isn't a market for the things you do, you will not get work. Rapoza demonstrated that there was a market for his kind of work, art directors and marketing people noticed that and decided to cash in. If there is no pre-existing interest, you will find it very very difficult to make anyone swallow your style. Anyone hiring your for it is then taking a big risk. If it's successful, you win big but if it isn't, you loose.
You can be the best art nouveau artist on the block but very few people will hire you. This is simple business. Supply and demand. If you're a well established artist you can sometimes create a demand by demonstrating your product but this isn't something that happens all that often to people early in their careers.
A little off topic but if you want to be better prepared for a career in art, take business and marketing courses. Artists suck at the business side of things and those with even modest skills in this win out (Noah Bradley, Anthony Jones etc.). Look over the things Noah Bradley does and try and dissect how he markets himself. I don't even like the guy that much but he does understand marketing fairly well. The "Don't go to Art School" thing blew up and I'd bet you that he knew it would. A provocative title, a large audience of students trying to self teach, bad formal art education all over the world, a lot of under-skilled and frustrated students in said schools, a booming business for online art education sources and several self taught artists that are very popular now. It was a perfect setup for his article and he nailed it. It's this kind of stuff you can do if you want to be a "man/woman of the people" when it comes to art.
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