“How do I evolve my art style to stay relevant?” To gauge what’s in style, you need to step outside your comfort zone. / Thus Spoke Hijiki Isoflavone
Article by Hijiki Isoflavone
Today’s theme is “How to evolve your art style to stay relevant.” While accuracy and skilled composition are crucial components of any good illustration, there’s also a certain charm to works embodying the latest coloring and brushwork trends. What the reader who sent me this question would like to know is, how do you incorporate what’s currently in style so that your art remains up to date?
When are artists most likely to tweak their art style?
If you’re familiar with my work, however, it’s as clear as day that my art style is far from what’s considered ”up to date,” no matter how you look at it. While this is more about my manga than illustrations, I belong to a dying breed of authors who provide so-called “out-of-panel commentary,” where I sometimes comment on absurd things my characters do right below the panel in question. The long and short of it is that I’m not the person you should be asking for advice on how to stay “hip.” For the sake of this column, though, let’s discuss what makes us feel like our art style is out of date and what we should do if we want to move with the times.
Let’s use my work as an example, which is highly influenced by manga and illustrations from the nineties. This means I love adding highlights to characters’ clothes, regardless of whether they’re wearing armor or kimono, heavily shading their noses, and making their hairlines as sharp and sleek as needle ice. Although there are plenty of artists whose works pay homage to the nineties while still retaining a modern flair, my style is ingrained in my soul. Naturally, this makes it harder to change my art style, but I don’t feel the need to do so since it’s what I’m most comfortable with.
That doesn’t mean that my art style hasn’t changed at all since I started drawing, though. Looking back on the past 15 years, it’s evident that it has, no matter how indiscernible those changes might be to an outsider. I’ve noticed that usually, when there’s been a noticeable change in my style, it’s because I’m hooked on some kind of series. There was a time when I used to make my characters’ hands and feet unrealistically large in proportion to their bodies; another time, I was into drawing ridiculously wide shoulders. I believe all these gradual changes stack upon one another like stratum, eventually creating a thick and solid strata that makes up a person’s art style. Often, people comment that my art style reminds them a lot of a certain card game anime, and they’re not wrong: some influences just happen to form a much thicker layer than others.
Essentially, one of the biggest reasons people’s art styles change is because they try to interpret other artists’ styles and make them their own in some way. Moreover, exposing yourself to new genres and works and seeing a wider range of fan art creates more opportunities to encounter styles you might not have seen before.
To keep up with the latest trends, you need to step outside your bubble
To change the subject for a moment, I returned to my hometown for an almost three-week-long visit this year over the year-end and New Year holidays. During that time, I barely left my parents’ house in the mountains, spending most of my days lazing around in pajamas or comfy clothes instead.
When I finally returned to Tokyo, I was in for a shock. Seeing the diverse range of outfits and the number of immaculately dressed people at the airport incorporating the latest fashion trends made me feel like I’d landed on a different planet. Because I’d spent so much time in the countryside, with my parents being my only source of human interaction, I had completely forgotten about the existence of styles and trends.
In a way, the same can be said for people’s art styles. Drawing something in your own style requires little effort, and works by your favorite creators can lose their novelty after a while, becoming as familiar and unchanged as an old photo that's been on the wall for decades. Chances are you don’t actively look up fan art of series you don’t follow either. When you consider all of the above, it’s easy to see why it can be hard for some artists to evolve their art to keep up with the trends.
Not to state the obvious, but if you want to know what type of art is currently “in,” simply checking your social media feeds isn’t going to cut it; you’re going to have to branch out. Even if you’re not actively trying to change your art style in any way, if you start to notice a certain technique or style popping up here and there, chances are it’s something that’s extremely in vogue right now—albeit you’re probably already late to the party, much like a television special on the most recent internet buzzwords.
If you want your art to feel more “trendy” but barely even own going-out clothes, let alone a sense of style, you can always learn by looking up the best-selling social network games or rankings on pixiv. In a way, evolving your art is similar to how you learn to style an outfit: by exploring how to utilize and adapt particular expressions and techniques to your own innate sense of style, you will naturally spark a transformation in your own creative output.
Like I mentioned, however, I’ve pretty much abandoned the notion of changing my art style, opting for cozy PJs over a stylish suit, so to speak. While a part of me wants to try modernizing my art to be on trend, I’m also quite comfortable and content with where I’m at now. In any case, there’s no right or wrong answer, so choose a pace that’s best for you.
