process – The Art of David Stankowicz

An artist needs to have their own style, but I think it’s crucial they don’t try to find it.

Every artist has a style that is uniquely their own. Just look and any famous creator’s work. You can tell who created it simply by the style of the work. A Glen Keane drawing is easily distinguishable from a J. Scott Campbell drawing. Each one is amazing, but with different styles that are attached to that artist. You can tell what is a Stanley “Artgerm” Lau illustration simply by the style he uses. What is so great is that no two artist have the same style. Or at least, they shouldn’t. I’ll get in to that in a bit. One thing I’ve learned though is that if you are struggling to find your own style, it is best not to focus heavily on figuring it out. Instead, you need to let your style find you.

How do let your style find you? Well, you do it by simply creating. That seems too simple, But allow me to explain further. If you are an artist or trying to become one, chances are you have some that you admire. Take a handful of those artists and analyze the parts of their work that you’d like to emulate. Maybe one draws great hands and another shows facial expressions well. Combine all these aspects and meld them into what you make. The fun is that you can experiment at this stage. Play around with different things and find something that works well for you. Truth be told, It’s how I developed my style. I took inspiration from artists that I admire and molded all those different ideas and techniques into something that I felt was unique to me. That may not work for everyone but it definitely helped me starting out. I experimented with many different approaches and even had a anime feel for a time (yikes!) I figured out what I liked and ditched the aspects that just felt off to me.

Let your style find you.

Don’t take this concept too far however. It can be very tempting to just copy verbatim a very appealing style of an already established artist. Its important to be your own artist and not just a carbon copy of another. There is already a Tom Bancroft. Don’t be another version of him. Play around and have fun with the process. You’ll know when you find that one style that fits you because it will just click. Not everyone is going to like your style either, which is a tough pill to swallow. I constantly struggle with that to this day. Every artist wants the entire world to like what they do, but that isn’t realistic. You can’t please all the people all of the time. So don’t stress on that or else it will eat you alive. Just create what you enjoy and those likeminded people with hopefully come one day.

So the moral here is to not beat yourself up while developing your style. Try to let it come naturally. Consume many different types of content, gather inspiration, and utilize that in your drawings. I’m not saying it’s an easy process, but it is a rewarding one. Just keep at it and don’t give up. Let your style find you.

Here is a progress shot of Pauline from the Mario series in my style.

Keep Moving Forward

April 3, 2021April 3, 2021 by DStankowicz Categories: IllustrationTags: drawing, experiment, illustration, Mario, Pauline, process, style

How I approach the process of creating a sketch and the difference between a sketch and a doodle.

Sketching is fun. It is often the entry point to learning to draw and there is no expectation behind it. They can be as messy or as clean as you want and neither is right or wrong. It suits whatever style and approach you wish to go with. I will go into detail on how I approach my sketches personally and why I never ever doodle. There is a difference between the two and I think many people conflate them. So lets talk about all that.

When I first started drawing, I would sketch very rigidly. I’d hold the pencil very tight and near the tip and try to make sure every stroke was perfectly placed. That might work for some, but for me, it resulted in stiff and motionless characters. I’ve since learned to approach it differently. When I’m ready to sketch, I grab the pencil (or stylus) farther from the tip and grip it much more loosely. I also stretch out my arm because I use the my whole arm when sketching. This is all to achieve a much wider range of motion with each stroke. I want to use long, quick pencil strokes to get the gesture down. The key for me is being light and messy here. Once I find the right line then I’ll go a bit harder with the pencil. I also try my best not to use an eraser. Its very easy to fall into the safety net of that eraser (or undo for digital) and by not using it at all, you train your hand to find the right lines quickly and fluidly. Sometimes it can look like it’s going all over the place, but there is an appeal to that. At least for me it is. I believe that is because it is very much an animators way of drawing. Look at many professional animator’s drawings and you’ll notice how rough and loose it is. Those lines exude confidence. Each one feels fluid and full of life. That might not appeal to everyone, but I’m someone who has fawned over animation for a long time so that rough and messy feel really grabs me. There is no better example than one of my art idols and animation legends, Glen Keane.

Glen Keane’s drawing have so much life and energy that you can feel how alive his characters are in their movements. I sense that on a visceral level. He is an animation god, and I’m going to commit a cardinal sin and compare myself to him. Every artist out there is screaming at me right now because that is the fastest way to head into a downward artistic spiral. But the point of this is just to show how my sketching style has evolved into something similar to his.

I used Ariel, one of Glen’s most iconic animated characters, for this. It feels absurd to mention myself in the same sentence as him, but you can see how my approach is loose and quick like his.

Now about doodling. I don’t doodle. Some people like to and to each their own. But I just can’t. I’ve tried many times and the end result just doesn’t do it for me. In my eyes, it never looks right. A doodle is defined as an absentminded drawing, and I can see how that can be beneficial. Just letting your hand go wild with no care can result in some interesting new ideas you’d never think of before. But for me personally, I need to have an idea first going into the drawing. I need to have a general idea of what I’m going for in the drawing with a some kind of plan on how I’ll achieve the end result I want. That’s just me though, so if you like doodling then have at it. Do whatever you find works best for you. Now you might be thinking, “wait, isn’t a sketch and doodle basically the same?”, and my answer to that would be an emphatic no. They are not the same. A sketch, while loose and messy, has a perceived end. A certain look and feel that the artist is searching for from the start. A doodle, however, has no endgame. There is no plan, no approach when doodling. The artist just sits down and draws whatever. I need a game plan in my mind, so for that reason I’ve never doodle.

A bit of a tangent here, but something that irks me a ton is when I see artists labeling something they did as a doodle when it is clearly anything but a doodle. Not sure if they think it is a form of a humble brag, but it annoys me. Don’t label a painting that took hours to create as a mere doodle. It may not be intended to be perceived this way, but to me it comes of as a bit arrogant. It is insulting to call what many would see as an amazing piece of art as a simple doodle. Whether intended or not, it downplays the amount of work and the level of skill and talent involved to create art. So that’s all I have to say on that. Mini rant over.

For the purpose of this post, I went against my normal process and tried doodling. I put down a few strokes and just made a random character connecting lines. Here was the result.

What even is this? A confused 90’s trucker dude with a mullet?

So there is a bit of insight into my approach at sketching. It may not be perfect, but it works for me. That is the point though. Every artist needs to find an approach and process that works well for them. My way may not work for you and someone else’s may not work for another. But that is the beauty of it. Each person developing their own process results in unique styles. No one wants to be the exact same as someone else, and that is what makes art so great.