Exploring Styles (part 1)

I have to admit, I’ve never really felt like I had a specific personal style—art-wise. There is not one certain way I like to paint--or draw--over any other way. This can make being a professional artist a little difficult. I assume. I’ve heard that if you are making a portfolio to try and get a job as an illustrator you want to have a clearly defined style within that portfolio—and if you want to illustrate in more than one style you should make a separate portfolio. This make since, because a client wanting to hire an illustrator for a specific job will look at your portfolio, and have several examples there to get a feel whether or not your style will suit their job. If your portfolio reflects that you do really crisp, but kinda…industrial, collage-y, rather abstract illustration that’s perfect for their magazine article about air pollution, they’d probably be a little disappointed if the illustration you turn in was bubbly and happy with a sloppy painterly style and pastel color palette.

Lucky for me I’m not trying to get a job as an illustrator. At the moment.

I think it is a lot of fun to explore a new way of painting. To pick up the paint brush and try to NOT use the same colors I always tend to, and NOT draw my subject out in the same manner I usually do, and just in general stop and notice those decisions I usually don’t even think about--and decide something different.

With my job as an artist at an embroidery company, I get to reinvent my style all the time. I don’t have to try and draw the same way any more than about 10-50 times, and then I get to move on. If it was a style I enjoyed anyway—I might get to do it again, but not usually.

Don’t get me wrong…I still tend to do recognizable things in my art that I just can’t seem to get away from. I think of it like a person who moves somewhere foreign and learns a new language that’s very different, but never loses their accent no matter how long they live there. These are all just examples of different "styles" I've played around with in the past:

(All artwork is mine, but all embroidery designs belong to www.embroideryonline.com and are linked to the collections on their site they come from. (Go ahead, try a click.))