How do I advance my artwork?
This post is a part of On Making - a weekly project where I answer questions about how to think about and develop your body of work as a visual artist. Each answer is intended to be a brief read that concludes with a guiding action you can consider immediately. If you’d like to subscribe to this ongoing support, consider joining me on Substack. Each question will be cross-posted for delivery to your inbox.
I think every artist - whether traditionally trained or self-taught - finds themselves in a place where they want to go deeper with the artwork they are creating. That is, they want to move beyond learning their foundational skills or using art as a meditation and therapy and enter a phase where they are communicating their own ideas. This skill isn’t always an easy one to bridge. Organizing lines, marks, shapes, gestures, and colors to bring to life something that primarily lives in a dream-like state is a challenge for every artist. It’s truly the crux of creativity - to make something from nothing.
Advancing your artwork requires introspection. You have to understand your ideas and their meaning. This inquiry adds substance to your artwork—going beyond what your artwork looks like and applying context to it.
Create a place you can find refuge in your creative practice, like a sketchbook.
The first step in moving beyond your foundational skills is turning to a place you can find refuge in your creative practice. I typically use my sketchbook, but you might consider a notebook, a journal, an app, a stack of index cards, or scrap paper - whatever you choose, find comfort and familiarity with it. You will use it to physically (and literally) sort through what’s in your head. It should be a container free of judgment and criticism.
Inside this container, you will have the creative freedom to take risks (see #4 below). To openly explore your ideas and begin observing your tendencies. Learn how you organize your visual marks—then ask why. Start placing meaning, purpose, and definition on what naturally emerges.
Analyze your influences.
I believe there is a time and a place to look at other art. If you are in a phase of your creative practice where you are trying to grow your technical skills, then looking at other artwork (I recommend in a different subject than you’re interested in working in) is actually rather helpful. Dissecting another artist’s process can greatly inform new ways of working.
Once you’re ready to move beyond building technical skills, you can analyze your influence to learn more about your style. What elements within the artwork inspired you? How did you translate it into your hand? How might this technique help further your ideas? Then, I encourage you to begin pulling away from analyzing others’ artwork and go directly to your subject’s source—like a reference photo, a physical location, a live model, a still life, etc. As you begin arranging compositions, mixing and applying color, and making marks in a way that excites you, you start making your own creative decisions. A creative decision is the process of problem-solving and finding solutions in your artwork. And this is where you’ll develop and refine your style.
Make using parameters and get comfortable with risks.
It’s extremely hard to advance your artwork when you keep creating the same thing and don’t know how to go beyond your own abilities to make something different. Though there is a time and a place to learn from repetition, it’s necessary to take risks to grow. Get comfortable with taking risks by working inside different parameters. These parameters might look like rendering your image in 1 minute, in 3 minutes. In a different material. Or upside down. You might consider working in a different style, like abstraction or realism. You could work in one color or a limited color palette. Maybe try a color that’s never appeared in your art. All these examples are relatively low risks that could lead to seeing your work in an entirely new way.
Look inward to find what resonates with you.
Sometimes it’s hard to advance your artwork because you simply don’t know yourself well enough. Creativity is largely personal, and in order to find the ideas that you want to spend quality time exploring and rendering, you have to know what interests you (and perhaps what doesn’t). What’s your life story, and how might it be influencing your perception of the world and how you’re presenting it? Ask yourself why certain things continuously appear in your artwork. Or, maybe there’s something deep within you that could encourage an entirely new take on your artwork.
Advancing your artwork requires you to become introspective. Go deep with yourself to begin finding context and substance in your artwork. Become a critic and ask questions.
If we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting - I’m Lauren Sauder, a landscape artist and artist mentor. If you enjoyed this post, here are a few more ways you can connect with me:
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