Q: How did you come up with and develop your style/technique?
A: I don't believe in style, and technique is nothing more than surface treatment, if it is not paired properly with the right visual solution.
I prefer to think of this in terms of personal voice, which is actually, a personal point of view. I define this simply, as deciding what you like and dislike about your work through trial and error.
You keep what works and discard what doesn't. In short, a personal voice is something that develops over time and it is a difficult thing to think your way through. The answer is in the action of doing. It is important to focus as much attention on what you paint, as how you paint it. As much as we need to know the fundamentals of picture making, we must understand the fundamentals of visual problem solving. Picture making can be addressed through the big questions: How? (technique), What? (subject matter), and Why? (visual problem solving/personal philosophy). These are all things that are encompassed in the idea of Personal Point of View.
If you subscribe to the idea that an artist's responsibility is to record the time in which we live (and I do), then your work should be ever-evolving, as the world changes around you. My approach is grounded in philosophies that change. These grand ideas become the thread that links a body of work together. The first time that I was aware of this, I was trying to combine line and tone. It took me some time, but all of the work was created towards that common goal. That helped to make it cohesive. Recently I've been attempting to show process in the finals. Currently, I am searching for ways of combining the narrative and the conceptual in my images, as well as a more painterly approach to conceptual work.
An artist who does not change and mature throughout their career is looking inwards at themselves, and they are not looking outwardly at the world. After all, aren't artists supposed to have curious minds?
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ADVICE.Sterling Hundley, artist
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4 comments:
I completely agree. I also think that your "style" becomes more unique as you increase your knowledge of other artists, past and present. If you use a little, for example, Andrew Wyeth and James Jean in one piece, and then in the next piece, a little Klimt and Josh Cochran....you will inevitably pick up on attributes of each artist that you enjoy. I still have a long way to go, but I strongly believe in knowing your influences for each piece. I think as time has went on my work has become more unique (although, like I said, it has a long way to go...haha)
Thanks for this blog Sterling!
I appreciate your good advice. As one who is striving to become a thriving artist, I think I am at a point where I am struggling to develop my own "voice" in my artwork. It is the process of trial and error that can be frustrating because new discoveries are not as immediate as I would like them to be.
BTW, I have been following your work for the past year or so and I really get inspired by great illustrators such as yourself. Keep up the good work. Thanks for being willing to share with the rest of us.
im glad you mentioned the "what and the why" in illustration. so many people are happy to make something that is only visually appealing, which has its own merits. But by adding other levels of depth, by not only including aesthetic decisions but also intellectual/social decisions to your image making process, you increase the value of the image substantially. on the same note of style. i read somewhere (i forget where), "style is merely mistakes we make on purpose" those are words that fit into your definition fairly well, and have giving me inspiration from time to time. keep up the good work!
Francis- The idea of the "accidental artist" seems to be prevalent in our culture. We are all assimilating bits and pieces of things that we experience every moment of every day. This is what keeps us current. It is how we redistribute those things that makes us relevant. When you are starting your career, you are trying to learn what you are capable of creating; testing your threshold. You are going to gravitate towards things that you have seen others do. This is a natural part of our assimilation. It is in choosing who we are influenced by, for how long, and in what ways (composition, color, drawing, painting, problem solving, texture, pattern, etc., etc.) that create who we are. This is why refining our taste becomes so important.
To shorten the learning curve in establishing a personal point of view, influences must grow beyond what is current and in fashion, beyond illustration, even beyond art. What influences us visually may have no bearing on how we solve things conceptually. For this, an artist must seek out intellectual inspirations, as well.
Francis, your pieces looked great in Creative Quarterly!
David- Something that may be of some assistance to you: Try to take two things that you are drawn to that may or may not relate, and find a way to bring them together. This can be applied to ideation, which is how I develop my ideas, as well as to technique. For example, I searched for a way to combine line and tone in my early career. I was drawn to both, and I was eager to find a way to make them work with each other. I was not able to figure this out in one painting, in fact, it took me a year or two to get the results that I was looking for. When I did this, I stayed with it for a while. This became the thread that unified all of the pieces from that period in my career.
James- I like the quote. That infers that the artist is aware of the mistakes. That the artist is willing to try new things, and becomes a passenger in the image making, as much as being the driver. Thank you for the insight, and taking the time to write.
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