Fundamentals Versus Style: It’s All About Quality

Most young artists are in a hurry to mimic the stylist who they envision as being the calling card of expertise. Style is not the place to start, but it’s what happens when you do understand. Without a solid foundation, style is brittle and unstable; you can’t keep it up.

Basic skills determine how an artist thinks and sees. When you know your form, volume, proportion and space relationships your decisions are more intentional rather than accidental. Sketches cease to become a chain of trial and error, but actually contain logic in terms of reasoning and visual conversation.

Getting proficient in the basic level is commonly a lot slower and less gratifying when compared with seeing finished art posted elsewhere. But this measured pace is just what creates enduring progress. Basic studies and structural exercises train the eye and mind to perceive.

But as fundamentals continue to improve, confidence builds slowly – organically. You start to have faith in your process because you know what you are doing and why. Shortcomings become informative rather than disheartening, and practice becomes a clear path forward rather than a repetitive slog.

Style is what happens when the fundamentals are no longer of conscious concern. Then personal expression becomes natural as skills can adjust, evolve and hold true in every challenge of creativity.