Art Advice: Letting the Art Take You Where It Needs To Go

Sometimes, when you are drawing, it's good practice not to have a set idea for your piece.  You can determine the subject and maybe the color scheme, but be open to listening to the piece tell you where to head creatively.

This might not make sense to those just starting out with making art or those artists who don’t yet have a set style. Don’t have an idea of what you want to make before you make it? How am I supposed to know what to draw then or even how to draw it?

Art Doesn’t Always Go As Planned, And That’s OK

Let me put this into an example for those of you questioning what it even means to “listen to your art.”  Oftentimes, newer artists can actually do what I am about to explain much easier than artists who have established art styles because newer artists are not set in their artistic ways.

Take this art piece below.

Image Source

When I first began this piece, I wanted to draw him in my normal line illustration with my normal purple, pink, and blue color scheme.  Easy.

But after a few attempts, I realized I didn't like what was happening with the piece.  I decided instead to try and use just the highlights from the picture in order to do a reverse-colored image.  I had done this before as an experiment on a few pieces of art and really enjoyed the way it turned out (see below).

So, I picked a color from my standard color scheme and filled in the highlights.  He turned out alright, but I felt he was missing something. I ended up adding more highlights to give him more detail.

I decided then to copy what I had created and change it all from pink to blue to see how that would look. This is when the first opportunity to “listen to the art” happened.  

As Bob Ross said so well, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”  When I changed the color from pink to blue, I made a mistake with one of the layers.  One of the blue layers ended up on top of the pink, but only on the layer where I had drawn the eyes. 

The result was these amazingly bright blue eyes that stood out from the rest of the pink face and hair, and this inspired me to keep them like that.  I played around with the hair as well, going back and forth between blue and pink, eventually ending up with the same blue as the eyes.  What is even better is that the blue overlapped the edges of the eye beautifully, which was all a complete accident.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Art Techniques. The Results Might Surprise You!

Before I began this piece, I had downloaded some brushes to play around with.  I ended up picking a circle pattern that gave me pop art vibes.  This image is of Oppenheimer, and he just gave me the feeling that he would look good in a pop art style.

All my playing around and mistakes led me to this final piece, which never would have happened had I planned out each and every brushstroke I was going to make.

The point here is that when I started out, I expected this to look like my other pieces of art.  But as I was actually working on the piece, the “mistakes” and experiments I did ended up making the piece what it is.  

Your Art Can Be a Guide For How to Expand Your Creativity

There is nothing wrong with having a vision for a piece of art, but if you keep your mind open, you can sometimes find you can create wonderful things even you may have never imagined.

It is important to note that I play around a lot with different styles I see and brushes that look interesting.  Doing that gives me a wide range of experiences to pull from and draw inspiration from as I draw my art pieces.  

And it is something that anyone of any skill level can do.  Like pop art but never tried it? Give it a go! Always wondered how hard using watercolors is? Download those brushes and try them out!  No one needs to see the messes you make (we all have more bad pieces of art than we would ever admit!). 

Basically, this can all be boiled down to a few key points for new artists:

• Make sure to experiment with new art styles and techniques

• Don’t feel stressed to plan out a whole art piece before you start

• Listen to the art as you are designing it for creative opportunities

As an artist, all you need to do is just keep trying and practicing.  One day, you will discover your own unique style that no one can do just like you can. Trust your creativity and your imagination.  It is all you need in order to make an amazingly unique piece of art that shows everyone how you view the world 🙂