Here's How You Can Create Unique Art!

Question the ingredients (your style)

Style is often influenced by other artworks. Ask yourself what aspects of your work reference other trends or styles: the line, shape design, colour palette, or the tone created by the values. It's very difficult to detach these influences from our creative process, but by asking these questions you can become aware of the degree to which your work resembles other art or stands out as more unique in its essence.

Cook!

Let's assume you feel you don't have a visual identity, your work looks too much like that mangaka or comic artist. That's fine. Developing something different means taking small pieces from various places and coming up with something that feels new. This often takes time and experimentation, but the path is built not by overthinking or over-worrying, but by being aware of which pieces you are taking and choosing simple subjects to bring those pieces together.

While learning, I choose themes that aren't too difficult for me to draw or paint, like portraits, and then I play with characteristics I've learned from other artists or from reality through practice. It feels like cooking, sometimes you burn the food, but after a while, you start to get good.

Don't make a sandwich

By sandwich, I mean the easiest thing everyone cooks. Go the opposite way, unique is not always aesthetically pleasing or popular. Look at Picasso's first cubist paintings: he wasn't even sure if he liked them, and many of his friends really didn't like them either. I'm not a fan of cubism, but I understand the value of making something different, even if it doesn't look nice. You create a new category that makes your art distinctive and recognisable. I've struggled for quite a while with this, because I'd like my style to not be confused with the other million artists doing anime-style stuff, but I hesitate to remove those big expressive eyes from my characters, as I quite like them, but I just can't come up with something better. Big eyes are very useful as well, as my fellow Japanese artists discovered decades ago. If it works, it works.

Conclusion

Don't put all the weight of creating "unique" art on just the aesthetics. I get it, aesthetics are very important in art, but it's also how you combine those shapes, strokes, and colours to evoke a feeling and tell a story that really nails the whole experience. The goal of these tips is to help you become aware, think differently, and create iconic artworks, distinctive from the rest and unique. Don't forget to share with me, I'd like to learn something new.

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Welcome to all new patrons. Remember you can now pre-order my book Life in Every Sketch on the 3DTotal shop.

https://rebrand.ly/The-Art-of-RamonN90

Please let me know if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to help with art advice or book details.