How to create a style of painting?

miguelnarayan

I almost did not post this, I'm not sure if it's too much of a personal thing to achieve that anyone can voice, but if I don't ask, I don't get, right?

I stopped trying to paint portraits and characters so accurately that it'd take me a long time, instead, nowadays I'm more in love with people works who can do abstraction with enough suggestion of how the character looks.

For example sakes. Here is a work from me, trying to paint in expressionism style and being accurate with form and value, although with little stylization: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/509yA
It's an old work.

Instead, nowadays I'm more drawn to try to stylize, not because I can't paint a whole photorealistic thing, but because I think it'd take a lot of time.

Abstract styles:
1. https://www.google.pt/search?q=serg...bih=812#imgrc=_

2. https://www.google.pt/search?q=gori...IBigB#imgr c=_

I'm sure there will be people smacking me for this, and accusing me of trying to hide my lack of skill to paint, but in reality, has nothing to do with that, it just means going a shorter road, while focusing more on drawing than enough painting to make it look a (little) better than just line. I could paint a little more detailed, I just want to simplify.

The way I see it, anyway, I can't put my finger on why the colors work, maybe someone can help me out? They don't seem to respect any quantity relationship, they all seem to have the same amount of hue and almost no strong blacks or strong whites, on top of that, the light and shadow relation, that bases itself on sphere light systems: https://www.google.pt/search?q=ligh...ht+sphere+study seems to be reduced to only one light side and one shadow side, excluding core shadows, reflect light, sometimes it has half tone but very little of it too.

Or maybe I should really just stick to something else? Hopefully a view of my work on the link in the post will be the judge of that.

I guess, ultimately, my goal is to redirect my portfolio to something that would be my artwork but friendly to apply to studios like Telltale and Gearbox. Should I be good painting studies of Van Gogh and other colorists?

Greg Westphal

Hey man, Cool to see that you're starting to think of where you want your art to go.  I haven't seen enough of your stuff to see where you're at in your art journey but I will say, stylization towards something you don't have naturally is extremely hard normally.  Usually the word is a blanket statement for anything not aiming towards an archetype style (like photo realistic or impressionist) but really stylization is what comes about after years of experimentation by an artist.  If you really like that style do a 1 for 1 copy Sergi's tutorials (he runs a patreon) or try and copy the piece to a style . Don't post it anywhere! just copy and see what that artist is doing to achieve a specific result.  I used to study Joe Mad and Makoto Kobayashi a ton to learn about where I should be adding line weight. With Sergi there are a ton of subtle gradients and his line weight on the final pass is extremely clean.  Sergi Brosa and Jamie Hewlett (gorillaz) is hard niche to hit because its so graphic and borrows heavily from comic and even though it looks effortless in its simplicity, it takes a long time to clean it to that point.

Also, find who those guys studied.  If you can work backwards and find where those guys drew inspiration from you can start to see what decisions they made to add to their art and weigh it vs what you find aesthetically pleasing.  Every artist consumes a ton of raw visual data and tries to add it to their "style" so its really cool to go back and check their timeline and see what they found important to study and add to their arsenal.

miguelnarayan

@Greg Westphal  but those artists, Mad Joe and Makoto Kobayash have a very cool visual, thanks for sharing your references, I didn't know them yet, but seen some of their art around.
I guess you are ultimately right, I nailed some style in drawing by happy accidents when doing life drawing, so I suppose I need to do more painting, being influenced and copying someone elses style may not be a good idea, like you say, it's far too personal to make it mine.
I do not have much to add other than a thanks. I will do a study of them, and just wait to develop my own thing.