A Sci-Fi Metaphor For Your Art Style – A Ramble

Well, since I couldn’t think of a better idea for an article, I thought that I’d offer a fun sci-fi metaphor for your art style. And, yes, this is another “Star Wars”-themed article. Anyway, if – like me – you have a vague passing knowledge of the mythology of this classic sci-fi series, then you’ll probably know that each of the series’ “Jedi” characters has their own unique lightsaber.

For those who have been living under a rock for the past forty-seven years or so, a “Jedi” is a benevolent interplanetary knight errant who can wield magical powers (called “The Force”) and who – famously – carries a glowing retractable laser sword called a “lightsaber”. And each of their lightsabers looks at least slightly different. The shape of the hilt might be different or the “blade” colour might be different, or they might even use a different configuration (eg: two shorter lightsabers, a double-bladed lightsaber etc...).

Part of the series mythology is that each “Jedi” has to build their own lightsaber. They have to meditate upon an energy crystal until it reflects some aspect of them or something like that. In the “Star Wars” universe, you can’t just go into a shop and buy a lightsaber. You have to make it yourself. And you have to train with it.

On a side-note: It’s very telling that one of the themes in the “Star Wars” series is that the villains are a lot more “standardised”. Whether it is the identical armour and identical laser guns used by the Imperial Stormtroopers or whether it is how the “Sith” (an evil version of the Jedi) literally ALL have red lightsabers. These days and in this context, it’s difficult not to see this as a metaphor for “A.I. art” or for chasing “popular” art styles, rather than finding your own.

And this idea is hardly unique to “Star Wars”. In fact, before “Star Wars” was even a thing – the long-running sci-fi TV series “Doctor Who” has a famous thing where, whenever the actor who plays The Doctor (a time-travelling alien) changed, then the character would “regenerate” into a different person. One interesting side-effect of this was that other stuff often changes too. Not only does the interior design of their time machine (“TARDIS”) change, but the design of their multi-functional “Sonic screwdriver” gadget also changes too.

Anyway, the point is one about uniqueness, time and practice. For an art style to really mean something to you, you have to build it yourself. Even if you start with one or more pre-existing styles or inspirations, then enough practice will mean that more of yourself will start to seep into it. Even if you stick to the pre-made style on the surface, things like what you choose to paint/draw will be shaped by your own sensibilities and imagination (unless you’re just “chasing clout” on social media...).

If you make enough art often enough, then it will shape itself to you. Even if you start out with a “standardised” style. Even if you try out lots of different stuff – in fact, trying out different things is how your style develops (because you’ll find something you like and, consciously or not, incorporate it into other art you make).

And, if you make art, you probably know all of this already. But, still, finding a silly way to liken yourself to a Jedi can certainly be a fun motivational thing to do 🙂

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May the force be with you 🙂

The Best Metaphor For An Artist’s “Style”

Although I’ve probably mentioned this before, I thought that I’d talk about one of the best metaphors I’ve found for an artist’s “style”. This was something I ended up thinking about after making a practice/fan art study of a screenshot from an old “First-person shooter” (FPS) videogame back in August.

At the time, I compared it to other FPS game-based practice artwork I’ve made and suddenly noticed that it looked like all of these games were using the same “game engine” as each other. Even if, in real life, they don’t – my art made it look like they did:

Here are four semi-digital practice/fan art paintings based on screenshots from four different first-person shooter games (“Exhumed”/”PowerSlave”, “Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death”, “Far Cry” and “F.E.A.R 3”). These games were released in 1996-2011, and each game uses a different “game engine” in real life. Yet, because they’re all painted in my style, they all look like they’re running on the same engine.

If you’ve never heard of a “game engine” before, it refers to the underlying programming code beneath a videogame’s textures, level design etc…. The logic that allows the game itself to function. Traditionally, games companies might make a new engine for a new game, but they would often just use the same engine for sequels (possibly with some improvements to it) or even licence out their engine to other studios, allowing those studios to speed up the development process (since they only had to focus on making textures, levels etc...).

Traditionally, you could tell what “engine” a game was running on because of the way that it looked and/or behaved. Each engine handles graphics in a different way. Each engine has its own limitations and strengths. Each engine has its own “feel” as well. And this means that, traditionally, totally different games will look or feel similar if they used the same “engine”. You can probably see where I’m going with this, but here’s an example of four different games running on variants and/or source ports of the classic 1990s “Build Engine“:

Here are screenshots of four different games – “Duke Nukem 3D” (1996), “Shadow Warrior” (1997), “Blood” (1997) and “Ion Fury” (2019) – which all use variants of the Build Engine. As you can see, they all have a mixture of 2D and 3D gaphics, mildly desaturated colours and a slightly “angular” look to them, even though the characters and locations are totally different.

And a “game engine” is the best metaphor I’ve ever seen for an artist’s personal style. Yes, it might get updated or improved over the years but, just like how classic games which use the same engine all seemed “similar” in a subtle way, any art that you make in your own style will also seem similar. The subject matter might be different in every drawing or painting, but the underlying “logic” behind it – and perhaps also the tools used to make it – will be similar.

Of course, if you want to stretch this metaphor even further, you can look at modern game development. Whilst some large studios still make their own “game engines” (like Capcom’s “RE Engine“ ) a lot of modern studios, whether small or large, will use more general pre-made “engines” that are licenced out by the companies who make them. This speeds up development time, but it makes the “feel” of a lot of modern games a bit less distinctive.

And this is a really good metaphor for more common “pre-made” art styles that some artists learn. Whether this is anime/manga art, photo-realism, traditional western comic art, Art Nouveau etc… Some artists choose to focus on more “standard” styles for all sorts of reasons – whether this is because teaching materials for them are more widely-available, whether it is because they are working in a team with other artists (and want consistent results) or whether it is because these common styles will be more recognisable to the audience.

And to stretch this metaphor to breaking point, we can also look at “A.I. Art”. A common complaint about modern videogames is that they can run badly, take up too much drive space etc… because modern game developers have forgotten the art of optimising their game’s code. Because pre-made engines mean that developers will spend more time on design, graphics etc… than on traditional efficient programming. Because, if a developer has a pre-made engine, then all of the really difficult programming has already been done for them.

And this reminds me a lot of “A.I. Art”. This is almost completely “design” – all you have to do is to tell the program the general concept you want and it’ll make a piece of “art” for you. Yes, you can tell it to use different styles – and this can be dubious if the style is one associated with a current artist – but, in the end, each program has its own “style”. It’s own flaws, quirks and limitations – the classic ones being weirdly distorted text and/or hands.

If you generate a piece of “A.I. Art”, then you’ll get a result very quickly but it will be in the program’s style rather than your own style. Because, if you’re using an A.I. to make all of your art, then you haven’t put the work into developing or optimising your own style.

But, yes, the “game engines” used in videogames are the best metaphor that I can find for an artist’s “style”.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

An Artist’s “Style” Covers More Than You Might Think (And Why It’s Impossible To Copy Exactly)

Whilst I’ve talked about this before, I was recently reminded of just how much more an artist’s “style” is than just the way that they draw and why it is basically impossible for one artist to copy another artist’s “style” perfectly.

[Note: Although I’d originally planned to include a visual example/comparison in this article, showing a practice study I made of a better cartoonist’s artwork, I eventually decided against it. Yes, it showed what I’m talking about better than any description ever could but, whilst I’ll occasionally post cartoon studies of more realistic images, a study of another cartoon didn’t really seem transformative enough. Anyway, on with the article…]

One evening in mid-May, I’d originally planned to finally watch the goofy 1995 sci-fi horror movie “Species” but, before I could pick up the DVD from the pile by my other desk, I had the inspiration to do some art practice instead 🙂 In particular, I wanted to try drawing and painting a study of a panel from my favourite webcomic – Winston Rowntree’s “Subnormality“.

This was one of those “I’ve always wanted to do this” type of practice projects, and I felt that I’d finally reached a skill level where I felt that I could. If you’ve never read Rowntree’s webcomic before, the art in it is absolutely sublime – it’s stylised enough to have personality, but also often a lot more detailed than you’d expect webcomic art to be. He’s the quintessential example of a cartoonist with a unique style – which is clearly influenced by lots of other things, but also very distinctive at the same time. And I wanted to see if I could make a study of his art.

Being aware of my current skill level, I decided to paint a panel from one of his older comics (warning – comedic/stylised gruesome image) from 2007-8, with relatively little in the way of background detail. Still, making a fun practice study of this “old” picture had the perfect balance between being a challenge for me but also being achievable if I put my mind to it.

So, I got started. Initially, I was actually worried that my study would be too similar to Rowntree’s original. And, whilst I usually make practice studies of photos, film stills and stuff like that – so I can see how realistic images translate into my own cartoon “style” – it was… weird… making a study of another cartoon. I noticed all sorts of subtle things, like how the mood and “personality” of his comic was very different to my usual art.

How even things like the expressions and the types of costume designs were subtly different. I could vividly see how it was made by a different person with a different imagination who was making art in a different context to me (eg: mid-late 2000s Canada vs. early-mid 2020s Britain). It’s one of those things that is difficult to express with words, but it clarified a lot about “art styles” for me.

My “version” looked different for a ton of reasons. The most obvious was probably the palette and materials. Whilst Rowntree is an artist who – like me – uses a mixture of traditional and digital tools, his process is different to mine. He makes ink drawings, scans them and adds colour digitally. I make ink and watercolour artwork and then edit a scanned copy using a free open-source program.

Not to mention that the exact palette he uses with these digital tools is different to the slightly more “faded” watercolour/digital one that I used. Likewise, he makes large pieces of detailed art and shrinks them. I personally am at my best when I’m making smaller pieces of art. And, because of the size of the A6 sketchbook I was using for my study, the “aspect ratio” of my study is a bit different to the panel too – it’s slightly wider.

Of course, even if I used exactly the same tools as him, my study would still look different for a ton of reasons. Seriously, don’t waste your time and money trying to copy the exact art supplies that your favourite artists use – instead, actually use the art supplies that work best for you. Copying another artist’s “process” or art supplies won’t turn you into them.

Not only that, I also noticed that I instinctively drew parts of the picture in a way which felt more intuitive or “better looking” to me, which resulted in a different look.

For example, one of the features of Rowntree’s older art is that the characters are a bit more “segmented”. For example, Justine’s left hand is drawn as a separate “outline” to her arm in the original – but I ended up making her entire arm one “outline” in my study, with a shorter vertical line to indicate her wrist.

Most of all though, as mentioned earlier, my study looked different to the original because each artist is a unique person. We each have our own sensibilities, inspirations/influences, imaginations, senses of humour, memories etc… and we each make art in a different place and context to each other too.

So, yes, an artist’s “style” is more than just the basic techniques they use. And because every artist is unique, it is – as my practice study shows – basically impossible to exactly copy another artist’s style. You are a different person to the artist you are trying to copy. So, embrace your uniqueness. You might not be your favourite artist, but you are you… and this means that you can create stuff that no-one else can.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Learning Art Can Be Weird – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about learning how to make art today, and how weird it can be. This was something I ended up thinking about a week or so after I watched a short Scott Christian Sava tutorial about how to draw noses. This video was an absolute revelation to me!

His technique of just drawing a simple circle and one or two brackets to get the underlying shape of the nose was brilliant, and something I was quickly able to incorporate into some of my art practice (albeit for art that I probably won’t post here for ages, because “art buffer”). It allowed me to retain my usual style but added a bit more logic and structure to the previous “rules” I had about drawing noses.

In over a decade of daily art practice, I didn’t know this simple technique for drawing noses – and I still got by ok. But I mention it because it reminded me how… weird… learning art can be, especially if you’re self-taught.

Yes, you might spend some time focusing on tutorials or increasing the amount of practice you do but, often, I’ve found that learning happens randomly and in small doses. You’ll see something in another piece of art that you want to try for yourself, and this will teach you how to draw one thing. You’ll be messing around with a digital art program and stumble across a feature – or a combination of features – which you hadn’t noticed before.

Sometimes, like in this article, you’ll stumble across a random tutorial for something which seems obvious in retrospect but which seemed like a revelation to you at the time. Sometimes, you’ll try to figure something out on your own and – whilst you might not “get it” the first time – you’ll eventually stumble across some way of drawing or painting what you want. You might play a fun computer game mod and be fascinated enough by the colour palette in it to work out WHY it works (eg: complementary colour pairs, warm/cold colours etc…) and then use this approach in your own palettes. I could go on for a long time.

Especially if you’re completely new to art, you might see something in another piece of art that you love but not have the knowledge to recognise what art medium (eg: digital, oil, watercolour etc…) that the original artist used, so you try to re-create the effect using whatever art supplies you actually have, and this may or may not teach you something. You might learn random by carefully studying photos or perhaps making a still life painting and – for example – suddenly spotting some of the “rules” that light follows.

Yes, if you actually take a formal course or class, then all of the information will probably be shown to you in a precise, linear order. However, even with that, I imagine that there’s probably still an element of what I described here. You’ll probably still occasionally stumble across interesting techniques and stuff during your ordinary practice. And “practice” really is the key word here, the chances of finding new techniques increases drastically if you actually make art on a regular basis.

Still, as haphazard and piecemeal as this type of art learning might seem, it’s actually a really good thing. Not only does the random joy of discovering or working out a new technique keep your art practice interesting, but it also helps you to develop your own personal “style” too.

If you’ve learnt how to draw noses from one artist, eyes from another, hands from yet another etc… If you’ve developed your colour palette from a computer game or movie, if your level of detail is inspired by your favourite comic, if you’ve figured out how to paint water from observation (eg: it’s a similar – but, depending on context, also lighter or darker – colour to either the sky above it [for deep water] or any surfaces directly below it [for shallow water]) etc… Then this will be a unique mixture of techniques.

And, if you haven’t guessed already, a “unique mixture of techniques” is pretty much the dictionary definition of an “art style”. So, for any flaws that it might have, one benefit of taking a more random approach to learning art is that it helps you to develop your own style. Especially since the stuff that you’ll really remember and use regularly will be the techniques that you personally think are “cool” or “useful” or whatever, so it also reflects your own sensibilities and practice too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

“Art Style” As A Metaphor For Perspective – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk very briefly about something cool that I just noticed about art. I was adding another small ballpoint pen drawing to the fan art sketchbook that I’ve been keeping for a couple of months, when I looked back through the older drawings that I’ve made in there and realised something wonderful.

There were drawings based on all sorts of different things – from old movies to music videos to computer games – and yet they were all in the same cartoon “style” as each other. They all used the same art medium – ballpoint pen – and they were all roughly the same size (10cm x 11.5cm) too.

It suddenly seemed like an absolutely excellent metaphor for subjectivity, uniqueness and perspective. All of these drawings of media that I consider to be cool and/or visually-interesting were all “filtered” through my art style and, despite being completely different from each other, they all still look vaguely similar in the sketchbook drawings because the one thing in common was the person drawing them. Like, if I draw literally anything, part of my own “style” is going to show through in it.

And this is an interesting metaphor for life itself too. Whatever you see or think or experience, it will be “filtered” through your own perspective. You will experience your own “version” of everything. Two people can hear the same piece of music but, due to different sensibilities/tastes or levels of musical knowledge, they will have totally different experiences.

Even your memories can influence how you see something. I mean, if you look at retro videogame footage on the internet, a more modern person might just think “Oh, it’s an old game. Modern games have better graphics” and not really feel much – but someone who played that game in their youth might be filled with warm feelings of nostalgia and personal meaning. No two people see the world in exactly the same way. And both variety and uniqueness are, after all, defining traits of humanity itself.

And making fan art can be a good way to remind yourself of this. Even if you try to be “accurate” or “realistic”. If you draw or paint lots of other things, then your own personal style is going to show through to some degree or other. It might be the way that you simplify complex realistic photographs into line drawings. It might be the type of lighting or palette you choose to use. On a more subtle level, it might even just be what you choose to draw or paint (eg: what you personally think is cool and/or visually-interesting).

On a side-note: This is also why using A.I. image generators – instead of making art by hand – feels so unsatisfying. Yes, you can tell these programs what to make, but it isn’t really filtered through your own personal perspective. It is filtered through the perspective of a computer program. Seriously, ten different people can all generate “art” using one program… but all ten pictures will all be in the “style” of the program. There’s literally no personality or personal expression involved in the finished “artwork”. There’s an unnatural “standardisation” to it.

But, most of all, making lots of drawings or paintings based on other stuff and then comparing all of the pictures will show you that the one thing that they have in common is your own personal “style”. Like, the pictures are completely different but they still look like they were seen by the same eyes and drawn by the same hand. And this is an amazing metaphor for things like perspective, subjectivity and how we are all unique.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Learning An Aesthetic – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about learning how to draw or paint using a particular aesthetic. If you haven’t heard this term before, it refers to the general “look” of an era of history or a particular genre or anything like that. I ended up thinking about this after preparing a couple of “Y2K aesthetic”-style digitally-edited paintings for next June. Here’s a preview:

Here are details from two “Y2K aesthetic”-style digitally-edited paintings that I’ll be hopefully posting here in early-mid June next year.

If you haven’t heard of the “Y2K aesthetic” before, it refers to the fashions, technology designs, furniture designs, magazine graphics, music video backdrops etc… that were considered to be “cool” in about 1997-2003 or so. Although I still have memories of these times, and I’ve made tons of “1990s” art and “cyberpunk” art and even “1990s cyberpunk” art before, I somehow couldn’t quite fully “get” the Y2K aesthetic – despite one or two earlier attempts – until shortly before I made these two paintings.

So, how did I learn the aesthetic? The traditional way of doing this is to look at as many examples as possible and work out what the common visual themes between them are, then use that information to make an original piece of art. And, whilst I probably should have done this, I accidentally stumbled across a bit of a shortcut.

I found an hour-long documentary about the aesthetic on Youtube and ended up watching a few parts of it – such as the ones about music videos and fashions – and it gave me the “missing piece” that I needed to make art using this aesthetic. Namely a mention of how music videos from the time often focused on cold lighting/palettes, reflective chrome and more minimalist locations. The documentary also reminded me how much of an influence the sci-fi genre had on the Y2K aesthetic too.

Yes, I could have worked this out from the 1990s music videos I’ve already seen, such as the cold and grungy “Blade Runner” (1982)-esque video for…. the 1997 song “Spice Up Your Life” by The Spice Girls (seriously, how is this mainstream pop music video so incredibly cool?), or the 1996 music video for “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (Warning – intense flickering lights throughout!) by Republica. Both of these videos feature metallic surfaces, cold lighting/palettes, sci-fi elements etc… And I should have been able to work it out from that, but I somehow didn’t.

Anyway, with the missing piece of “Cold colours and metallic surfaces”, it was surprisingly easy to make “Y2K Aesthetic” art. I could also lean very heavily on everything I’ve already learnt about making cyberpunk genre art and about late 1990s/early 2000s fashions (from both memories of the time and watching stuff from the time). I basically just made some cyberpunk art but with metallic walls, a more blue-heavy palette and 1990s outfits for the characters.

Still, one of the cool things about making art in an aesthetic that you haven’t used before is that it will be at least slightly unique to you. Not only is this because every artist has at least a slightly unique “style” but also because of the unique combination of influences each artist has and also the artist’s personal sensibilities too. For example, some of the late 1990s/early 2000s films (eg: “Existenz”, “High Heels And Low Lifes” etc…) which had a vague influence on my paintings may well be different to the older films you’ve watched before making your own art.

But, going back to sensibilities, one of the interesting things about making a couple of pieces of “Y2K aesthetic” artwork was that – although it was cool to finally make something in this style – it didn’t really interest me as much as I thought it would. I love sci-fi artwork and I love “1990s” artwork, but the cold minimalism of the Y2K aesthetic didn’t really fit into my style as much as I thought it would. As regular readers probably already know, I tend to prefer using palettes with bolder colours and a stronger contrast between cold and warm colours too. I prefer to include things like old-school Brutalist architecture, some 1980s-style elements etc…:

“A Street In The Future” by C. A. Brown

So, trying out different aesthetics can also teach you a bit about your own sensibilties. If making art in a particular aesthetic isn’t as fun as you thought, then its worth asking why, since you might learn a bit more about yourself when you find the answer.

But, yes, if you want to learn how to use a particular aesthetic in your art (eg: Y2K, Frutiger Aero, Art Nouveau etc…) then the best way to do it is to either look at lots of different examples of it until you can find common visual themes between most of them, or just look online for documentaries or articles about the aesthetic that tell you what these themes are.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

How Limitations Can Help You To Find Your “Art Style”

Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about one of the many ways that you can find your own personal “art style” and/or see it a bit more clearly. As regular readers know, I’ve been doing a lot of sketchbook practice at the time of writing in mid-February. One of the interesting things that I’ve noticed about this is that – with a tiny number of exceptions – I’ve gravitated more towards drawing studies of realistic photographs rather than of more stylised artwork by other artists.

Part of this was because I initially wanted to improve the cartoonish art style that I use all of the time and part was also just curiosity about what scenes from some of my favourite films, TV shows etc… would look like when drawn in this cartoonish art style. Since I use a tiny A6 sketchbook and draw in ballpoint pen (after a pencil sketch), it is a lot more difficult to make this sketchbook art look hyper-realistic or to include too much precise detail.

In other words, when I mess around with my sketchbook, I begin with a detailed realistic image and have to find a way to reduce it down into a simpler drawing. I have to make lots of creative decisions about what I do and don’t include. Even though I’m “copying by sight”, paying close attention to the exact outlines of everything in the photo (remember – in a 2D photo of a 3D scene, the shapes of everything will be distorted slightly), I still have to make a ton of small creative decisions. I have to “down-convert”/”downgrade” a photograph into a small ballpoint pen drawing that I could make in less than an hour.

And, if you make cartoon art, then the exact way that you simplify things is basically your own personal “style”. And, thinking about it more, limitations like these can be useful if you want to find, look at and/or improve your own unique art style. Limitations force you to simplify things and make creative decisions. Some of these will probably be almost instinctive, but they will result in a piece of art that looks distinctive, even if it is based on something else.

Of course, this only applies to cartoon art styles and it is hardly the only part of what makes your own “style” unique either. If you instinctively gravitate towards a more “realistic” style, then your style might include more subtle things like the general types of subjects that you choose to draw or paint, the overall “mood” of your art, how you handle lighting/colour etc… If you are more interested in landscapes, then your style might include the types of landscapes or weather that you prefer to focus on. It can even include things like whether you prefer to use drawing-based or painting-based art mediums.

An artist’s “style” is a complicated thing. Even in my “cartoon” art, the original semi-digital paintings I make every day also show other elements of my style too – such as the types of colour palettes, lighting, costume designs etc… that I like to use. If anyone is curious, these often are: a bolder limited palette paired with chiaroscuro/ tenebrist lighting (which creates this cool “Dark psychedelia” look) and things like retro fashions and gothic fashions too. These are things that I think look interesting and therefore enjoy including in my art:

“DVD 2003” by C. A. Brown

Even if you’re just making fan art or studies of other stuff, your “style” can include what you choose to focus on. For example, in my sketchbook, a lot of the artwork focuses on older films from the 1970s-2000s and on the horror genre too. I’ve noticed all sorts of other weird and amusing themes in the images that I select for these practice studies too. So, even if you’re doing “uncreative” copying, then even just your choices of what you copy can show you stuff about your art style.

But, still, if you just want to see what your unique “style” looks like, then trying to draw or paint some realistic photos of people can be a good way to learn about it. You’ll have to simplify the source image a bit and this will show you something about your “style”. Yes, your “style” is much more than just “How you draw people”, but this is the most easily-recognisable part of any artist’s style.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂

Why You Should Make “In The Style Of…” Art By Hand (Rather Than Using An A.I.)

Well, I thought that I’d talk about A.I. image generators yet again. In particular, why you should try to make art “in the style of” someone else by hand, rather than using one of these cool futuristic programs to do it for you.

Yes, you should ideally develop your own art style rather than just copying other people’s – but copying can sometimes be part of finding it. If you try to imitate several different styles that you like then, gradually, a unique combination of them will emerge that will be uniquely “yours”. You’ll focus on the parts of other styles that you like and end up with a unique mixture of them.

For example, the influences on my style include: 1990s Saturday morning cartoons, manga/anime, a “Doom II” WAD called “Ancient Aliens“, the movie “Blade Runner”, old horror novel and heavy metal album covers, Caravaggio, various comics and webcomics… amongst other things. Yet my style looks different to any one of these things, because it’s something that is a combination of many different influences. One might have influenced how I handle colours, another influenced the style of lighting I use, another influenced an earlier version of how I drew faces etc…

Your art style will always be a “work in progress”, because you’ll keep seeing things that will influence it in subtle ways. For example, I handle lighting slightly differently to how I did 2-3 years ago after discovering how to add backlighting to the digitally-edited paintings that I make. What I’m trying to say is that, if you make enough art and look at enough art that you like, your own style will gradually develop on its own over time.

Still, saying all of this, making new art in the style of another artist can be an interesting exercise and an artistic challenge. This was something I ended up thinking about after doing some card-throwing practice and suddenly having a mental image of Caravaggio’s 1594 painting “The Cardsharps“. I wanted to make a digitally-edited painting of a 16th century character throwing playing cards, but in the style of Caravaggio. Although I won’t “officially” post it here until early November, here’s a preview:

This is a preview of a vaguely Caravaggio-style digitally-edited painting that I’ll be “officially” posting here in early November.

Yes, it doesn’t really look like a Caravaggio painting… but this is kind of the point. My style, like every art style, has its limitations. I can only make even vaguely “realistic” art if I’m painting “still life” art or looking at photos. I’m using completely different art materials to Caravaggio. I made my artwork in about an hour, Caravaggio spent much longer on his paintings. I wanted to add some extra visual contrast (eg: adding cold colours to the shadowy areas). About the only things it even vaguely has in common with Caravaggio are the historical clothing, the “tavern” setting, the dense shadows and the heavy use of warm lighting/colours.

Of course, whilst making it, I was influenced by other things too. The most notable one was probably Gustave Courbet’s 1843-45 painting “The Desperate Man“, as well as perhaps a subliminal hint of Robert Rodriguez’s 1995 action film “Desperado” too. The candle holder on the table was something I vaguely remembered from a restaurant I visited a few times during the early-mid 2000s. I could go on for a while.

Anyway, the point of this is that – when you try to make new art in another artist’s style- there will be “imperfections” and “inaccuracies”… but that is literally the whole point!

It is your interpretation of another artist, rather than a carbon copy of their work. It shows you as much about your own style, sensibilities and imagination as it does about the artist you are trying to copy. Not only that, in order to imitate another artist’s style you also have to study their work and figure out the “rules” of what makes their art unique. This can teach you all sorts of stuff, which can also enhance the rest of your art style too.

Again, though, the “imperfections” are the point. It’s a bit like a cover song. The best cover songs don’t sound completely identical to the original. There are subtle differences in the voice, the instrumentations, the emotions and stuff like that. It is what makes cover songs interesting. Every musician is unique and, when they try to copy another musician, part of their own uniqueness still shows.

Of course, if you just use an A.I. image generator to create – for example – “A painting of an orange in the style of Rembrandt“, then it will try to do this as precisely as possible. It might actually look like a genuine Rembrandt at a glance. It might briefly satisfy your curiosity about what an orange would look like if Rembrandt painted it, but it’ll teach you nothing about yourself. It won’t enhance your own art in any way, it won’t teach you anything about Rembrandt’s techniques and it won’t have the kind of “cover version”-type imperfections that result in interesting art.

In other words, getting an A.I. to copy another artist’s style for you will result in something that is “too perfect”. A dull plagiarism, rather than an interesting “cover version”.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Trying To Imitate An Older Version Of My Art Style…

A few days before I wrote the first draft of this article, I was looking through some of my old art and – unusually – was astonished by how good some of the cyberpunk art I made in 2016-17 was. Some of it even looked better and more detailed than some of my more recent stuff in the genre!

If you’ve ever made art, you’ll probably know how rare this sort of experience is. Usually, when you look back at your old art, it will look worse than you remember. It’s usually one of the best ways to see how much you have advanced and improved as an artist. Yet, whilst I could see some small technical errors and things that I did differently back then (eg: rain effects, adding skin tones digitally etc...), they still looked better than I expected:

Here are four cyberpunk digitally-edited paintings that I made in autumn 2016 (and posted here in summer 2017). Whilst not perfect, they look a lot more detailed and have a lot more “personality” than I expected them to.

For comparison, here’s one of the very best pieces of cyberpunk art that I posted here in November 2022:

“Red Sky Blue Glow” by C. A. Brown

Whilst it certainly isn’t bad, it doesn’t really look as detailed or visually compelling as the older examples. And, after getting over some of the gloomier emotions this evoked, I was curious about why this happened and whether I could recapture some of the old “magic” that my cyberpunk art used to have.

Some parts were impossible to replicate – such as the context and mindset of the time. Back in 2016, the cyberpunk genre was still relatively “new” to me. Yes, I’d seen some cyberpunk stuff during the 2000s, but not that much of it (eg: “Blade Runner”, “The Matrix”, “Cowboy Bebop” and about four cyberpunk novels).

In 2016-17, I really wanted to learn more about the genre and to explore it in the art that I made. It was still exciting and fresh. I’d search for anything in the genre I could get my hands on – old games like “Deus Ex” (2000), anime (eg: “Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex”, a few episodes of “Ergo Proxy” etc...) and any films I could find (eg: “Trancers”, “Total Recall 2070” etc…). I would also listen to cyberpunk music by bands like Perturbator too.

It was exciting, I was really curious – and I think that a lot of this initial passion really showed in my art at the time. Every cyberpunk piece I created felt ultra-cool to make, like I was building and exploring an imaginary retro-futuristic city whilst also learning the visual “rules” of the genre and finding my own interpretation of it too. Again, some of the stuff I made back then still impresses me to this day, like this digitally-edited painting from a few years ago:

“Backstreets” By C. A. Brown

But, whilst I still love the genre a few years later, making art in it feels a bit more “ordinary” now and it’s something I do slightly less often. The novelty has worn off. Still, I wanted to see if there was anything I could learn from my old art.

Some of the differences were because of the tools and techniques I used back then. Whilst I’ve combined traditional and digital materials since at least the early 2010s, I was using… less advanced… graphics programs in 2016 (seriously, the rain effects were added using an old version of MS Paint. Most of the other digital stuff was done using a late 1990s program called “Jasc Paint Shop Pro 6”). Likewise, I’d add all of the lighting using traditional tools too – since I didn’t learn how to add lighting digitally until about 2018/19.

However, since about 2020/21, I not only found myself using a very different lighting style – focusing more on hazy backlighting to make the foreground stand out from the background – but I’d gotten a bit more confident with my digital art skills too. As such, both to save time and because it looked cool, I’d often fill in the distant background using “100% digital” tools. This had the side-effect of making the backgrounds look less detailed.

The art still looked “cyberpunk”, but it was missing the detail that impressed me in my older art. Not only is the genre focused on “information overload”, but a lot of the smaller details gave my old art a level of “personality” which some of my modern cyberpunk art lacked.

And this was the crux of the issue – detail. Often, if you want to imitate an older version of your art style, it’s worth looking for the more basic things that set it apart from your current art. These can usually be summarised in just one or two words (eg: “detail”, “palette”, “lighting” etc…). Once you’ve found it, then you can try making new stuff that is like your old stuff.

However, I also didn’t want to lose the progress I had made or switch back to using inferior tools. So, I decided to focus more on detail. Part of this involved using a smaller painting size so I could add more detail in the same amount of time it took me to make a larger painting, but some of it was just remembering to at least add more detail to the foreground and mid-ground. The results look like a hybrid between my current style and my “2016” style, but it was still a noticeable improvement. Here’s a preview:

The digitally-edited paintings will “officially” be posted here in October. As you can see, the style is kind of like a hybrid between my hyper-detailed “old” style and my less detailed “modern” style.

Again, if you try to replicate an older version of your own style, then it won’t be “perfect”. Not only will the surrounding context be different, but you’ll also have improved as an artist too. Still, whilst you won’t be able to make an exact copy of your old “style”, you can at least create an interesting hybrid of your current and old styles which keeps the best parts of both.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

How An Artist Takes Inspiration

Well, I thought that I’d talk about the process of taking inspiration and walk you through an example of it. Whilst I am neither a great artist nor a thief, there is a small grain of truth to the old saying about both of these things. Often, artistic inspiration comes from looking at several pre-existing things and doing something new, different and creative with them.

Anyway, when I was preparing a digitally-edited painting that I’ll “officially” be posting here in October 2023, I wanted to try something a bit different. One of the alternate costumes in the indie survival horror game that I reviewed yesterday – “Alisa: The Developer’s Cut” (2022) – had sparked my imagination. It was a short-sleeved “Victorian doll”-style orange dress with a white apron – which instantly evoked mental images of the psychedelic 1960s and of old ice-cream parlours and American diners. The outfit and the orange/white palette intrigued me. I wanted to make some art.

However, I didn’t want to make fan art or copy the outfit directly. So, instead of the 19th century-inspired design in the game, I instead went for a more 1990s-style design, a short white dress layered over an orange T-shirt. I also went with a different character design too. Given the 1960s mood the initial source material evoked in me, I also had associative memories of psychedelic music – The Beatles, Hendrix etc…- and decided to draw her playing a guitar.

The initial inspiration for this was probably a hollow-body electric guitar (from a famous brand) I saw in a Youtube video – although I went for a slightly more generic design. For the amp, I originally thought about including a distinctive-looking tangerine-coloured amp (from a famous brand), but eventually settled for a generic lime-green one – both to avoid copying (or *ugh* product placement) and to fit in with the background better.

Talking of the background, the eerie Art Nouveau background designs in parts of “Alisa: The Developer’s Cut” (2022) – themselves possibly inspired by Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film “Suspiria” – suddenly jogged loose a memory of the Korova Milk Bar from Stanley Kubrick’s notorious 1971 film “A Clockwork Orange”. I obviously couldn’t copy it, but I wanted to reference it.

Instead of white lettering on a black wall, I decided to go with vivid lime green instead. I also used a different “font” – generic bubble writing – too. For the words, I chose the words “Mellow” (since it sounded vaguely similar to “Vellocet” from the film) and “Lime” – as a reference to the colour. I also added a poster based on a recurring item (“Tangerine Frost”) from the short stories I used to write during the late 2000s. I don’t know why I remembered this, but it seemed worth adding. Still, fitting in with the theme, I changed it from a slush drink to some soft-scoop ice cream.

For the distant background, I wanted to go for both clean pastel colours and Art Nouveau type sculptures. This was inspired by some of the things I’ve mentioned earlier, as well as 1960s sci-fi. I’d planned to add a translucent green pyramid and a psychedelic sky too (possibly inspired by – I should probably add a very prominent FLICKER WARNING here – the modern animated video for ELO’s 1970s hit “Mr Blue Sky”).

There are about ten different inspirations so far – and I avoided directly copying anything.

Yet, after I scanned in my original painting and started editing it digitally… it went in a completely different direction. In short, other elements of my “art style” asserted themselves. Whether this was my love for neon-lit 1980s cyberpunk or even the way that I like to handle colours and lighting or how I like to separate the foreground and background, the final picture ended up looking… somewhat different… to my original “vision” for it:

This is a comparison of the painting before and after digital editing. As you can see, my “style” asserted itself a bit more strongly during editing – turning the picture into more of a “dark 1980s sci-fi” kind of thing. Sorry about the “preview” text, the picture won’t officially appear here until October 2023. And, yes, I’ve been experimenting with a “widescreen” format for the paintings which will appear then…

Inspiration is all about connections, associative memory and stuff like that. But, when an artist takes inspiration from something properly, they will usually make something which looks at least slightly different to it. Leaving aside issues of plagiarism and copyright, the main reasons for this are: the fact that inspiration will often come from multiple sources, because you’re thinking about your picture as a whole (and might have to change stuff to, for example, fit into the colour scheme or mood of the picture) and because of your art style.

This, by the way, is why having a distinctive “art style” is important. Ironically, one of the best ways to get a style is to take inspiration for every artist who inspires you and practice a lot until they merge together into something new. Still, once you’ve got your own personal style, then everything you draw or paint will automatically look slightly different to anything else.

Yes, as shown earlier, a style can be a limitation – but it also allows you to take inspiration whilst also being original at the same time. Still, the main point of all of this is that there is no such thing as truly “original” art. Everything is inspired by something. However, the “originality” comes from mixing different inspirations and turning them into something different than any one part.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂