Style

I have realized through this process that I learn a lot of lessons on my own, which is not what I expected at the beginning of this project. If there are so many resources on the web and in the library, I assumed it must be hard to improve one's drawing skills on his/her own. But I have learned that you can teach yourself a lot of things simply through practice. You start to pick up on mistakes you are repeatedly making, and improve them. I feel like getting better at drawing is really just a matter of trying to improve in a certain area, and then experimenting with new areas and subjects until you learn how to successfully draw them. This, I believe, is how one develops a style.

I have talked a little about developing a style, and it's because without one, you are no different from the everyone else. Though to me, it seems like something that would come naturally when I look at artists like Hokusai, I find it difficult to draw in a way that is unique to me. Instead of the style finding me, I have to go and search for the style. The annual art show is really good at exemplifying different styles, where each student's panel is completely different from the one's beside it. I can tell that a lot of the students in the higher level art classes have found their style. Seeing this makes me want to develop my own more than ever, and I was hoping to accomplish this through the project. However, I think the way in which I organized my project inhibited me a bit.

I decided in the beginning that studying famous and accomplished artists would be the best way to improve my technical drawing skill, because in trying to emulate them and their work, I would need to raise my standards. I would say that this worked out for the most part, since this forced me to draw with a more careful nature, and pay more attention to detail. However, while this method might have been good in that sense, I never really allowed myself to be free. If I had spent more time drawing from my imagination instead of trying to copy various elements from Escher, Dali, and Hokusai's work, I probably would have been one step closer to finding a style that suits me, a place where I felt comfortable and where I interpret others work with my own style instead of simply copying it as best I can.

Of course, my timeline for this project was not completely hindering. Since art has been being created for thousands of years, some would say that there are no completely new ideas anymore; everything is based off of something else. Since I chose artists whose work I enjoy, hopefully I can try to use their work to develop who I am as an artist.