Tips to Find Your Style as an Illustrator

Finding your style, especially when planning to build a career around your work, can be challenging. After scrolling through the perfectly cohesive galleries of other artists, you may feel pressured to establish a completely unique style with a consistent palette of 5 colours that you and only YOU can be recognised for.

The you look at your instagram grid and think that it is all over the place, but you just love drawing in so many different styles, why should you narrow it down!

Well, I've struggled with this issue myself and now feel equipped to give my two cents on how to define your style to be marketable.

Start by making mood boards

Yes, of other people’s artwork. These aren't for copying, but rather to help you visualise your style through others' work. Ask yourself, how would you describe what you see? Is your style modern or traditional, cartoonish or realistic, flat or voluminous, optimistic or serious? It can be helpful to ask someone else to describe it. Sometimes an outsider's perspective can provide insight that we oversee.

Divide the mood boards by topic so you make yourself the question around different identity elements. Some subjects you can use are:

Fonts
Colours
Logos
Textures
Character design
Light treatment

I use Pinterest for this, but you can use any tool you like, even paper and scissors.

Follow your gut: what do you enjoy drawing most?

Let’s be honest. It is tempting to draw subjects that we have no business drawing. Naturally, we are best gifted at some things. I love drawing people and I know I can do it because I have practised a billion times. However, I would love to be good at drawing animals, but it is not my best subject. I admire illustrators that draw realistic birds but no matter how hard I try, it is not a subject I enjoy. Don’t push yourself too hard on territories that you are not driven into.

Avoid starting with a small colour palette

Some artists produce impressive work using just 3-4 colours. When I tried to do this with my own art, I found myself struggling to create complex scenes and I quickly grew tired of using the same colours. Often, you can tell at what point an artist got tired of a specific palette because their art changes abruptly. It is important to use cohesive colours and it is a very recognisable sign of identity for an illustrator, but at the beginning, a short palette can be limiting.

Try this instead:

Begin with a larger palette, consisting of 8-12 colours. This selection can set your mood: whether they're cool tones, dark, neutral, earthy, or bright. Select a few as your key tones, around which you build your palette. But don't hesitate to introduce new additions into your mix.

Explore outside of social media

Create work exclusively for yourself. Don't rush to publish it; instead, discover which process “sparks most joy” for you. You might be overly focused on digital work, but a single paper collage could reveal a new passion. Free yourself from high expectations and don't fixate on the end result. The process is the true aim of experimentation.

Participate in Drawing Challenges

I find very helpful to do drawing challenges. Don’t look at how anyone else did the challenge, focus on what comes naturally out of you. On instagram I recommend This is not a T-shirt for fashion illustration, The Botanica Collective if you love drawing plants, The Tuesday Collective to explore different themes around fashion, and StillHereStilllife for food illustration.

Another great option is making DTIYS (Draw This in Your Style) challenges. Sometimes, an artist creates an illustration for other artists to replicate and make their own. I find these challenges not only very fun but also very helpful to practice your own art language. It is interesting to see how different your art can look like from everybody else’s even with the same subject.

I recently created this DTIYS challenge, feel free to participate!

Don’t rush it!

Defining your style doesn't happen overnight. It can take months or even years, as it's the outcome of relentless work, exploration, and self-discovery. Remember, your art will always be evolving and you might never reach a point where you feel you've entirely defined your style, and that's okay! If you are struggling to recognise your style, please don’t panic. It is part of the process and many other established artists have been in the same position.

Keep experimenting, exploring different mediums, and try to have an objective look on your work. Over time, you will start to recognise patterns and common elements, helping you define your artistic style.

I hope my tips can help you with actionable steps to follow and help you through your style seeking journey.