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Where Did You Get Your 'Style' From?

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Thea Cable

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Everyone has their own style of painting which usually makes their work instantly recognisable. How do we get these styles - are they learned, do they just come from within, are they an unconscious response, or do they come from a deliberate attempt to paint in a certain style? My style is a mish-mash learned from books, DVD's, paintings I have seen, artists I admire, trying to translate what I want my paintings to look like and what is obviously inside my head. Is that how it is for everyone else I wonder?

Amanda Bates

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Ooh, tricky! My style owes something to the knife. I started using a knife to loosen up. It worked. My style owes something else to a portrait / Fauvism workshop, in which I realised the values of "wrong" colours. My style owes yet something more to the artists of the past whose work I admire. Rembrandt. Cezanne. Turner. O'Keefe. Many others. My style owes a little bit to the necessity of finishing a plein air painting in the time available between dropping the children off at school, walking to and up the hill ... and packing up, walking (back home and) to the playground in time to collect the children from school. But the base elements of my style have been there a long, long time. I recently found some pencil sketches of a sleeping puppy that I made when I was a teenager. I can see some of my style there. It developed (it grew colours) and loosened up a bit, but ... well, I think style might be a latent thing that emerges when you draw and paint enough and then grows with you.

Keith Orange

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I regularly attend life drawing classes, and it seems to me that everybody has their own distinctive style. I think the style is already inherent in your personality, and although it may improve with practice and skill, it doesn't change much.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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Probably is inherent - I know I was influenced by a professional painter friend, many years ago, and by the Walter Foster painting books, particularly one on oil painting by Béla Bodó: whose own style (he's still alive) has changed hugely (for the worse, I think!). I don't know if I have a style or not, though ... I can nearly always recognize other people's, but rather obviously I can't apply the criteria to myself that I apply to know who has painted what, even before I see the name. I know Thea's, Sylvia's, Alan Owen's, Pratim's, Rupert's style immediately I see it; and obviously Kirstie's. Can you lot recognize mine?

Peter Davison

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If I have a style I think it is mostly inherent, my drawing and painting has not changed in essence since schooldays, although I hope it has improved (if that makes sense). My artwork has not been helped by a technical drawing education which required precision and detail and for a time translated to my painting in overdrawn and over detailed buildings etc. Any inherent capability is influenced by, in my case, traditional painters that I admire (Turner, Seago, the Dutch Masters) and current artists I have been fortunate to meet and learn from, particularly Martin Kinnear, Robert Brindley and David Curtis. But I assume the current guys I learn from, and the traditional artists I admire, are all subconsciously selected by my inherent preferences so maybe it is a full circle and it is all in our genes.
encaustic flower 001

Nerys B

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I guess I got my style for me. This is the way I have developed by just faffing about and doing what I do, wet into wet and lifting out. I have tried other styles over the years influenced by many books/art demo's, but I think I can be recognised by my own style of wet into wet and lifting out, now.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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Where - are you all seeing it? - is this "nbsp" crap coming from??? It is SO annoying!
Amanda Brett 4

Amanda Brett

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i'm definitely a mish-mash too Thea but there are some strong influences for me too Ted Sherwen and Frank Webb are my favourite watercolourists. I think it is possible to develop a style to paint the way you want to paint but i think our "handwriting" is unique and will shine through. for me it takes intense concentration and determination to develop and improve. cheers Amanda Watercolour Workshop at the Watermill, Posara, Tuscany 9-16 July 2016

Michael Davies

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For myself I am just wondering how long it is going to take for MY style to emerge ! As stated in a previous "blog" we produce work which must be consciously or unconsciously based on work by artists we like, any tuition we have had, etc.. A recent visit to Patchings confirmed my long-held regard for the work of David Curtis - I can only hope that if I'm right, sooner or later I might produce something like his !!