What does your style tell you about yourself?
I’ve been wondering, lately: does one’s style in art reflect one’s style in life? Or is it a complete coincidence that I favour quite a loose way of working as well as what might be termed a loose way of living? Shut up. Not in that sense.
Let’s compare:
A liking for splodgy pictures, inks, watercolours and other unpredictable media; a tendency to start a picture and ’see where it goes’; a preference for artwork drawn on old scraps of paper and collages made from things other people discard; an inability to draw an ink line without smudging it…
and..
A general difficulty with discipline and measurement, keeping a tidy house, or maintaining tailored lines in my clothing, and a preference for unruly hairstyles, a junk aesthetic, and jumble sales.
If this was a quiz in a magazine, the conclusion would be, “A trail of ink blots follows you everywhere you go and there is always a hair between the picture and the glass when you frame a picture. You are Quentin Blake. ” (That’s Blake’s work above)
And yet, it’s not as though I don’t admire the work of more reined-in, disciplined artists. On the contrary. I suppose I look at artists like Carl Larsson (picture below) with an understanding that I will never achieve such work. That needn’t stop me liking it - learning from it, even. Remember - anything can be an inspiration, and the greatest art happens when your inspiration goes through you and comes out as something quite different.
Could my general lifestyle and my style in art be linked? Tell me - is there a similar correlation in your life?
Posted: August 7th, 2007 under You, Technique, Me.
Comments: 8
8 Comments
Sorry, comments have now been closed for this page. Please use the form on the Contact page if you wish to make a comment.
I think you’re definitely on to something there. My drawings tend to be abstract (Ok ok they’re doodles!) and I like a nice clean piece of white paper and a black ink pen, smooth lines, circles seamlessly joined up etc… This does rather fit with a linear, theoretical brain that likes to plan and control and can’t bear clutter or distraction or ‘noise’.
But more interestingly, I like the idea that ‘doing’ art in a different way to usual can be transformative or therapeutic on some level. I really enjoyed doing clay sculpture for a while, where I deliberately didn’t plan (this was quite hard for me so I developed a method where I started with a rough ball of clay and just accentuated or smoothed over the dips or ‘points’ that I saw.) It always turned into something eventually and helped me access the other side of my brain which was a pleasant change- a bit like meditation actually! So I challenge you Myf to a neat, planned, clean-lined drawing and let me know how it feels…..
Argh! I can deal it out, but I can’t take it!
Of course, spending time on a picture would be against the usual Drawanyway ethos of snatched moments, but then again, I did attempt a bit more discipline in this post. And, bizarrely, disliked the picture I came out with quite a lot.
However, I am quite intrigued by the idea of working against your natural impulses. There must be many readers of Drawanyway whom I’m asking to do just that when I say ‘let go control a bit’. Given that style in art must be a bit of a journey, it’s almost like asking people to wander down a path they hadn’t planned on - for good or ill.
Anyway, I will give it another go because now I’m really interested to see what happens.
I seem to like to play by the rules: my drawings are nearly always pen-and-ink outlines filled in with colored pencil. Backgrounds tend to be very controlled (monochromatic!) or nonexistent. The figure is easy to focus on. I think this reflects my lifestyle somewhat. I find the repeated patterns that sometimes appear in my art meditative to produce. The subjects themselves are almost always fantasy figures, representing the world I would like to escape to.
Art is such a very personal thing, I suppose it’s almost a given that it will reflect your life. I hadn’t considered the representation of subliminal desires and so on, though. That’s a more one-to-one correlation, more understandable, I think.
I think you are onto something. I tend to have a looser style and in turn I also tend to live a little looser. I am not a clean and neat person. I prefer order and organization but yet never come close to achieving them in my little world. My studio has stuff all over the place, I prefer to leave my paints all out and can never seem to find that “green” I know I just put down right there. My paintings and drawings tend to be the same. I start and see where it goes, I don’t like to plan or bother too much with details. Much like my life. Not ideal, but it’s me.
Oh boy, this made me laugh! That sounds so much like my life. But it’s not all bad. I am absolutely sure that even if it’s inconvenient for day-to-day living, it has a good effect on your artwork.
I think it’s very true but then I wonder; my craft work e.g. collages, crochet and dressmaking are all bright, colourful, neat and eye-catching. My drawings and paintings are messy, dark, splodgy and very ‘free’. My ceramics (especially the designs) are structural, geometric, sculptural and strong.
Hmmm….
Several sides to your inner psyche! Clearly! And obviously it’s vital that you have all three so they can all come out.