What should I do if I keep defaulting to making trendy art and I feel like I’m losing my way?

Apr 4

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When emerging artists begin their career, they’re often looking to other people. After all, looking to other people can teach you a lot about the industry - what appears to be working and what doesn’t. However, looking to other people in a visual field, can influence the work you’re creating and trick you to believe you have to strike the visual trends to find the confirming response you’re looking for. This can cause you to lose what comes naturally to you.

When you start to create artwork that’s on trend, and you feel like you’re losing your way, I encourage you to find introspection - get clear on where your fear of creating in your own style is coming from. Are you scared to commit to one thing? Are you scared to take risks? Are you scared of failure? Maybe you’re unsure what your true interests are. And don’t know how to nurture your own ideas. Or maybe you’re worried that everything’s been done before. If you keep finding yourself in this place, here is what I would encourage.

Look at your artwork and build a style log.

Even if you are copying the work of others, you are going to have natural tendencies in the way you create. Look at the artwork you’ve made to date, and observe the commonalities in your pieces. What subjects appear over and over again? What elements do you render often? What stylistic characteristics do you tend to gravitate towards? Document your answers and begin compiling a list.

Then, if you’d like to go a bit deeper, analyze your answers. Begin to determine why each of these commonalities is important to you and important to your artwork. You also don’t have to carry all the commonalities you observed forward - choose the ones that best support your ideas and your artwork.

Create constraints around your ideas.

Next, take some of the ideas that emerged in the first exercise and begin to render your ideas under different types of constraints. You could set a timer and make an image of your subject in 1-minute or less. You can repeat this exercise so you create 30 different images in under 1-minute. You could also constrain the materials you use, like choosing a limited color palette to render several images. You may find that working outside of your usual style can help you discover interests and direction.

Putting constraints on your artwork will encourage you to creatively problem-solve by bypassing logic and reasoning. It will also encourage you to move outside of your comfort zone. This leaves less room for thinking and more room for intuition which helps further identify your natural tendencies. You’ll learn how to take more risks in your work and avoid always working in the same way.

Begin to unpack your message.

Both of the above exercises will help you take the first step in making artwork in your own style. But, to create honest artwork, it’s also essential to make artwork with your own ideas. It can sometimes be challenging to find your own ideas. It requires you to become close to yourself.

By looking at your past artwork, inspiration, memories, opinions, values (etc.) think about answering the following questions: What excites you? What interests you? What are you curious about? What do you want to communicate visually? Answering these types of questions can take time. Get to know yourself and yourself as an artist.

If you feel like you are losing your way by defaulting to making trendy art, find introspection to identify your own interests and ideas. Set up a couple of working sessions to walk through exercises that will help you navigate to your own artistic style.

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