Is style needed?

I got this from Austin Kleon's tumblr:


“Don’t worry about style. It will be expressed no matter what you do. Style is part of the way your brain is wired.” —Luke Sullivan

“The problem with art today: the artist believes he must find a style (or a schtick really) and defend it with his life. And if all the schticks are already taken, he must pull one out of his ass. He must find one, invent one, fabricate one, for he can be nothing if he cannot be original.” —Eddie Campbell

“Style is a capitalist invention. It’s a trademark. It’s very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn’t my first concern. I got restless…” —Art Spiegelman

“The way to professional accomplishment: you have to demonstrate that you know something unique, that you can repeat, over, and over and over until ultimately you lose interest in it… The model for personal development is antithetical to the model for professional success….Whenever Picasso learned how to do something he abandoned it.” —Milton Glaser

“In our current cult of originality, the pressure is to have a personal style as soon as possible, and the classroom environments often have this mentality as well. Everyone is freaking out: “What’s my style? What’s my thing?” It’s too much too fast. This race for originality has, over the years, spread from that future-goal timeline to just after college to (now) inside college itself. A safety zone no longer exists.” —Dash Shaw

“When I talk to young composers, I tell them, I know that you’re all worried about finding your voice. Actually you’re going to find your voice. By the time you’re 30, you’ll find it. But that’s not the problem. The problem is getting rid of it.” —Philip Glass

“Don’t worry about a style. It will creep up on you and eventually you will have to undo it in order to go further.” —Gary Panter



Don't worry about style, instead, master the fundamentals and always draw honestly from life. By doing this, you will be open to new possibilities instead of being trapped in inbred methods that has been rehashed over and over for centuries.

I think it is better to be known not for your style but for your honesty and versatility. What will represent you will not be superficial details, rather the wide range of work you will accumulate over the years. Having only a single style is limiting anyway, it will be a cage that you have to escape in order to grow. Atleast in this path you can shake things up by having the solid foundation to experiment with anything as you please.

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Don't wait to get better - Guidelines for making things the zen way

Art - a mountain without summit

1. First, realize that you already have all that you need now. You can produce great stuff right this moment.  The only thing that's holding you back are your impossible standards and fear. Always remember that when the muse sees your butt in the chair, she will deliver.

2. The second thing is that simplicity is important, but simplicity is also relative. Simplicity is key in all things. Eliminate the unnecessary to highlight what's important. On the other hand, we must realize that what's complicated and hard to you now could be relatively simple to a master.

3. That brings us to the third point. Improving your skills is essential, but do it along the way. You'll never be ready -  improving artistically is a mountain with no summit.

4. The style should serve the material, not the other way around. This is bigger than yourself, more than a style, it is about an idea that needs to be communicated. As artists, we have to be humble enough to let the material itself guide our choices.

So in short, do the thing that you want to do right now, don’t wait to be ‘better.’ You’ll always want to be better. No idea you have is so grand that it’s worth wasting your life over until you’re ‘ready.’ Do the damn thing right now and try to just keep improving as an artist as you go along. Finally, be humble to recognize that we are but humble vessels of ideas, thus, our decisions have to be guided by what's best for the material.

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The Effortless life - a 30 day experiment

"The journey is the destination"

Life is totally unpredictable.

That's one of the things I've learned ever since I started to seriously update this blog in my quest to become a better artist. Overall, I think I did become a slightly better artist in three months' time, but the funny thing is, I think I also became a better person.

It's weird, but I really do feel wiser and happier. And it all started with a realization that "Art is a mountain with no summit".

Almost everyone I know is looking for an upgrade all the time. I'm not an exception.

I have to get better at gesture drawing, expressions, animation, painting, animal drawing, character designs..I have to be great at everything! But as we all know, these are very vague goals. After all, how do we know if we already made it as a character designer? What is the yardstick for "greatness" at a certain area of artistry?

Think about it, have you ever heard a great artist say "I've reached the standard that I want when I was 30, so I stopped learning and just started churning out a ton of amazing work. This worked out until my retirement when I got to enjoy the fruits of my planning and foresight. Now I'm chillin in the bahamas, a beautiful lady in one arm and a coconut drink in another."

Obviously, that's an exaggeration but you get the point. It's crazy but many artists have this illusion of reaching that perfect position that you've learned all you can and from this moment on, people will praise every work of art you put out and you will never make another mistake.

This is a flawed belief, one that took me awhile to understand but once I did, I immediately recognized how insane it is. 

So to counteract this craziness, I want to do an experiment from the other side of the spectrum. I recently purchased a book entitled "The Effortless Life" by Leo Babauta. He's the same guy that runs the site zenhabits.com and for some years now, he gave up on basic success concepts like "goals" or "planning" and instead rely on where his passion lies for the day. This is a foreign concept to most of us but I think it warrants a try because Leo claims he's never been happier and more productive, and I just think there's a better way than stressing out on things I can't control and feeling bad whenever things didn't go out as planned(which is 90% of the time).

As a start, I made a very "loose" list of guidelines, just something to help me remember the concepts:

Guidelines for my Zen way of effortless living:

1. Have no fixed goals, plans or expectations

2. Instead of improvement and success, think about exploration and having fun. You're now free to do things not because you want to be better, but because you love it.

3. Don't create false needs, create no unnecessary actions.

4. Don't rush.

5. Prefer subtraction.

6. Don't spend time comparing yourself to other people, instead realize that you have everything that you need and try to help other people.

That's it. A month without planning, curriculums and dreams of success. This will mostly apply to my personal time of learning since I have a job, but for that period in my day, everything's an open book. I'll just go wherever your passion takes me, and take everything as it is.

I'll see you in a few weeks and let you know how it goes!

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