In Search of Style

Drawing when Drawing is Hard

A lot of the accounts I follow on Instagram are illustrators. I'm drawn to the craft like a fly to sugar. The simile is pretty accurate. Every time I see an image pop up in my feed, I'm drawn in. I feast. And at the same time, I feel inadequate. These artists are creating something wholly themselves, sharing a piece of who they are with the world.

Just a few cool images I get to see on the daily.

And I’m not really sure what I’m sharing with the world when I draw. I chase trends. I synthesize work based on what captures me in other people’s illustrations. But what is my style?

What is MY style?

My Style in Phases

When I was a kid I would draw big beefy¹ superheroes because I grew up on Superman comic books, and that was the deal. Then my characters became skinny rails… because I was a skinny rail. I had a brief moment - after watching the 13th Warrior - where I made a lot of drawings with long haired Vikings with huge swords in a battle landscape. This may have also coincided with the Lord of the Rings movies, so it was a double inspiration.²

It was a phase.

Then I got into a vector art³ phase as I learned Adobe Illustrator and moved off the sketch pad and into the digital world.

And I did a LOT of different styles in vector form. Some were simple like the piece above. Some were highly detailed like this hunting scene I created, using gradients and shapes to simulate lighting.

“The Hunting Trip”

In Love with Style

There’s just so much to love… so many different styles to play with that I’ve gotten lost in them over the years. And I don’t know if I’ve found the one that is capital M-E me. This is part one of a process for me. I’m going to be drawing in different ways, sharing them with you, and I hope that you will join the ride as we figure out what Rob is good at together. ❤️

1. Beefy arms make me think of Trogdor the Burninator too… you’re welcome.

2. Thank you, Aragorn son of Arathorn.

3. Vector art is a digital art form that utilizes mathematics with points in space rather than pixel artwork. This allows for vector art to be scaled up almost infinitely, making it ideal for print work.