An advice column by creatives who've already learned their lesson.

Finding your style as an artist can be hard when kickstarting your career. Award-winning illustrator Georgia Perry dishes out some sage advice for anyone seeking to establish their vibe with a little help from eight top working illustrators from around the globe.

  Words: Georgia Perry
Illustration: Lola Beltran

I've been working as a commercial illustrator for the past 15 years, and the question I get asked more than any other is some version of "how did you find your style?"

And unfortunately, I can never give a clean answer! There was no pivotal moment, no defining day where I opened my sketchbook and decided, "This is my thing now." Instead, my work evolved (and continues to evolve) slowly, over years of creating and experimenting, learning and obsessing, absorbing influences and experiencing life.

Georgia Perry's vibrant, 60's-tinged work in all its glory. 

That's probably frustrating news if you're hoping for a shortcut, but good news if the idea of "finding your style" stresses you out – because that's not your job! Your job is to make enough work that your style has a chance to reveal itself.

IF YOU'RE SITTING THERE TWO YEARS INTO YOUR CAREER FEELING LIKE EVERYONE ELSE GOT THE STYLE MEMO, YOU’RE NOT FAILING – YOU’RE IN THE PROCESS OF FINDING IT.

Janelle Burger

After speaking with a range of working illustrators, designers and artists from around the world, some clear patterns emerged. Almost no one sat down and consciously created a style, with many pointing out that forcing yourself into one only builds boundaries around your creativity.

The secret ingredient mentioned by nearly everyone though: TIME. As Timba Smits put it, a unique voice "requires introspection and time. Lots of time."

Here's more of what I took from their interviews, with my two cents thrown in as well.

Two styles, one approach. "If I had to summarize what matters most to me, it would be the feeling of familiarity, the expression of emotions, and the connections between collective and personal memories." — Enikő Katalin Eged

How many styles is too many styles, and does it even matter?

When asked to count their illustration styles, almost nobody had a clean number. For many (myself included), it seems to be something that evolves over time.

Hungarian illustrator and folk-artist Enikő Katalin Eged works in two distinct visual languages – one abstract, one comic-inspired and highly detailed. The desire for "a really strict and coherent style," she said, "can be a trap because it creates unnecessary boundaries around your creativity." Instead, her coherence lives in her themes, emotions and tones.

Timba Smits explains that he works in "a dozen different styles" across commercial and personal work, and then mentions a secret one: a daily warm-up where he draws with his non-dominant hand to shake off his perfectionism (definitely going to try that tomorrow).

The playfulness, humor, and craft of mid-century advertising is a consistent influence that helps tie Timba Smits' larger body of work together. 

On the other end of things, Gabe Schneider, who works under the studio name Sight Study, gave a simple answer: one. Some of his work might be more illustrative, some more minimal, but his style isn't something he can switch off for one project and on for another. As he put it, the artists he loves are "the through-line in their work."

Vintage color palettes, aged paper textures, symmetry, and organic elements all combine to create Gabe Schneider's signature style. 

Artist, collector and Bad Guys Club founder, Craig Gleason adds: "I try to make sure everything looks like I made it” whether the output be paintings, digital work, comics or t-shirts.

So you might have one style or twelve. What makes it yours is you. Your own particular set of instincts about color, mark-making and mood that can only be developed over (yep, you guessed it) time.

Whether it's an acrylic painting on reclaimed wood panels or a digitally stippled and textured illustration, Craig Gleeson is always focused on creating work that looks like only he could make it. 

There is no shortcut for time (sorry) 

If there was one answer everyone aligned on, it was this one.

Artist and graphic designer YONIL says style is built from "fragments, influences, failed attempts, thoughts, colors, mistakes and experiments you collect over time. There's no shortcut for time." Timba echoes this with: "Good things take time. Great things take a lifetime." (Someone please put that on a poster for me.)

Relatably, Gabe Schneider says his style came from time, yes, but also "a lot of self doubt, copying, over-examining." He made a lot of personal work just for fun, and in that process "saw my work looking more and more like mine."

YONIL's signature style is the sum of years' worth of ideas, experiments, mistakes, and happy accidents. 

"Make a lot of work" might feel like empty advice, but it really is what allows you to notice patterns – the things you keep coming back to, often without consciously deciding to. The decisions you start to repeat without realising it is often where your own style begins to emerge.

Illustrator Janelle Burger describes her process as trying "almost everything," keeping what felt right, and "eventually what was left was just me."

Janelle Burger says her indigenous Australian and Sicilian heritage are deeply woven into how she creates art. "I feel lucky to carry both cultures with me wherever I go, and I think that dual perspective gives my work a texture that's uniquely me."

That's probably closer to how style develops for most people, including me. Not on purpose – but through repetition. And unfortunately, you can't fast-forward that! So if you're sitting there two years into your career feeling like everyone else got the style memo, you’re not failing – you’re in the process of finding it.

FOLLOWING TRENDS IS "A FAST WAY TO FIT IN AND A SLOW WAY TO DISAPPEAR.

Janelle Burger

You are what you eat

So where do the raw ingredients for style come from? It seems the artists with the strongest voices have the widest interests. Their work is influenced by music, literature, architecture, fashion, history, film, politics, family stories and personal obsessions – not just other illustrators.

Griets Ariandy Sinaga – full-time illustrator and professional rabbit-holer (that's definitely a thing) cites psychedelia, sci-fi and pop culture as influences, and says, "I'm kind of addicted to researching stuff" (I feel that). He continues: "you're basically shaped by everything you consume." What you watch, what you listen to, what you spend your time obsessing over – all of it slowly shapes your taste, and your taste is what shapes how you respond to and make things.

"Psychedelia, vintage sci-fi, and solarpunk. Heavy stippling texture and vibrant colors merging into surreal imagery, that’s basically my whole thing I guess" — Griets Ariandy Sinaga.

Dutch illustrator Micha Huigen traces his surreal, comic-inflected style straight back to a teenage graffiti habit, then realism at art school, which gave him the tools to "bend realism into something surreal."

Craig Gleason's advice is to "have a ton of influences so it can all jumble up in your head and come out in a unique way" – something I wholeheartedly subscribe to. It feels particularly relevant now, when algorithms tend to narrow our creative worlds.

"I don't consciously follow trends; I just follow what I'm inspired by. I think that results in a style that can't go out of fashion because it never was in fashion." — Micah Huigen

And Gabe Schneider made a point I'd underline ten times if I could: don't just look at your own discipline. "If you're a graphic designer, look at some paintings! If you're a photographer, read a poem."

I too personally believe that cross-pollinating your influences – having a vast bank of references and ideas to call on – is what builds a great creative mind.

IF YOU'RE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER, LOOK AT SOME PAINTINGS! IF YOU'RE A PHOTOGRAPHER, READ A POEM.

Gabe Schneider 

One catch worth mentioning here (that both Timba and Micha flag as well) is the dreaded comparison trap. Bafta award-winning animator Hannah Jacobs touches on this too: she can feel her work becoming less intuitive after too much scrolling. The more outside influence she consumes, the harder it gets to hear her own instincts – and I suspect most illustrators know exactly what she's talking about.

Hannah Jacobs says, "Find the way you enjoy making work first and foremost. Draw the way only you can draw, and it will instantly be interesting. Oh, and stay off Instagram."

It can be a very quick slide from feeding your taste to drowning in it when we're constantly being bombarded with visual input. So as far as influences go: consume widely, but digest slowly!

The fastest way to fit in is the slowest way to disappear

Of course, as creatives we're influenced by what's happening around us – we absorb visual culture whether we mean to or not. But how do we navigate design trends, especially when we're just starting out and still developing our own sense of style?

Janelle Burger says following trends is "a fast way to fit in and a slow way to disappear." If you only draw what's popular, you'll never leave enough room to find out what's actually yours.

I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit. We are all absorbers of a unique blend of influences, and whatever that synthesizes into, will be uniquely ours. The more times you run through the process, the more that unique style will sharpen." — Gabe Schneider

Gabe echoes this: by the time a look is widely adopted enough to be called a "trend," it has already started losing whatever made it interesting in the first place.

Griets’ comment also really resonates with me: ‘Being online all the time genuinely fries everybody's attention span creatively. We're consuming way too much stuff 24/7 now. Because of that I find it really hard to stay locked into just one style when we constantly find something better.

Enikő takes a more tactical approach: she leans on abstraction precisely because it leaves room for interpretation and doesn't follow "fast-changing Pinterest and Instagram trends."

"Don’t get too caught up chasing whatever looks “good” or trendy. Focus more on what genuinely connects with you. That’s usually where the interesting stuff comes from." — Griets Ariandy Sinaga

I know a lot of people feel this one: the god-forsaken algorithm rewards sameness, and the pressure to make the thing that's clearly working for everyone else is real and constant. But fitting in and being remembered are two very different things. My feeling is the work that sticks will always feel a little too much like “you” to ever be anyone else's.

A real style knows what it isn't

Here's where some of the answers split dramatically – the question of adapting your style for a specific client or project.

For some, it's a hard no. Craig Gleason only takes jobs that give him total freedom, because "I can't do someone else's style as good as I do my own." Enikő won't even start on someone else's vision.

IT CAN FEEL SCARY TURNING WORK DOWN, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE STARTING OUT. BUT SAYING NO TO A JOB THAT ISN'T THE RIGHT FIT ISN'T A FAILURE

Gabe Schneider

Hannah's been pushed to adapt many times, with mixed outcomes – working in a borrowed style "kills my intuition," she said, and pitching in a style that isn't yours feels "like asking a violinist to just have a bash at the drums instead." Anyone who's ever white-knuckled their way through a brief in someone else's aesthetic knows exactly that feeling (I've been there, and it never ends well).

"I never worry about what’s hot. I just make stuff that I think is cool or funny.  I make the stuff I wish I could stumble upon someone else making." — Craig Gleeson

Janelle's cautionary tale is one I've also lived a version of: a client who kept pushing her toward a palette that felt completely alien, arriving with references from other artists they admired. At a certain point she realised they should have just hired those artists instead. The project taught her to align on vision early and be honest upfront when something isn't a fit.

A very wise answer came from Gabe, who learned not just to say no but to refer the client to someone whose style actually fits. "Part of having a niche," he said, "is knowing when your niche isn't the right fit for a job."

It can feel scary turning work down, especially when you're starting out. But saying no to a job that isn't the right fit isn't a failure. Sometimes it's just a consequence of having a style at all. The more distinct your work becomes, the more important it is to protect what makes it yours.

YONIL offers an interesting counterweight, though: the right client with the right brief can create productive friction that pushes you somewhere you wouldn't have reached alone.

Speaking personally, I had a quick poster job for Adidas about ten years ago where I chose to experiment in a different style, and it's informed my practice ever since – so it’s case by case.

The AI question – are we all fucked? And why your style will save you

When asked whether AI is making it harder to carve out a distinctive style, the responses ranged wildly. Micha Huigen called AI-generated art "a spit in the face of human creativity." Janelle Burger described a market flooded with "slop" that mimics the surface of a style without any of the intention behind it. Gabe called the tools "regurgitation machines" that pull from the same well and can never quite reach novelty.

"AI slop is flooding the market with images that mimic the surface of a style without any of the intention behind it." — Janelle Burger

YONIL cites AI as being "deeply problematic" in its current form and says it only sharpens his pull toward materiality – paint stains, rough edges, cut paper, "evidence of a real person making decisions." Janelle Burger, who works in traditional pen and ink, talked about scanning her physical marks to build custom digital brushes, so the handmade quality carries over into digital work.

I'm not going to pretend I sit entirely on one side of this – anyone who follows me knows I've experimented with AI tools in my workflow and copped some heat for it. The ethical and environmental problems are real, and I won't just wave them away. But after reading everyone's answers back-to-back, I noticed a through-line.

The one thing these tools cannot create is the exact thing this entire article has been about...

AN AI MODEL CAN REPLICATE A STYLE BUT IT CANNOT HAVE ONE

Georgia Perry

 "I think artists with a distinct style have to worry less about AI, because there are always clients who value original human-made art." — Micah Huigen

AI has no fifteen years of repetition behind it. No secret non-dominant-hand warm-up. No teenage graffiti phase. No obsession with vintage sci-fi comics. No punk posters on the bedroom wall. No pile of embarrassing old sketchbooks hidden in a cupboard somewhere!

It just pulls from the same online well as everyone else, which is exactly why so much AI-generated work drifts towards the average (or the “slop” if you will)

"A lot of the work I truly connect with are interesting because something in them almost falls apart. There’s tension and uncertainty and evidence of a real person making decisions." — YONIL

And style is the opposite of average. It's the side effect of one specific person living one specific life. A collection of influences, experiences, mistakes, interests and instincts that no one else has in quite the same combination. And it only happens when you show up and do the work, year after year after year.

YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE ENOUGH WORK SO THAT YOUR STYLE HAS A CHANCE TO REVEAL ITSELF.

Georgia Perry

You never actually arrive

The last thing I want to say is that none of this ends! Style isn't a destination you reach and then just kick back on for the rest of your career.

YONIL said he'd be a little worried if his style ever became too fixed or too polished, and hopes it keeps changing. Gabe used to be terrified of deviating in case he "lost" his style, and now thinks that's a silly fear – your style isn't something you can really lose, because you, the artist, are the constant. We're all absorbers of a unique blend of influences, and whatever that synthesises into is going to be uniquely ours.

So if you're feeling lost on the way to finding your style – stop looking and start making. And make a shit-ton of stuff! Feed your taste with everything – paintings, poems, films, trees, travel, dirt. Notice what you keep returning to. Say no to the work that isn't yours, and feel good about it. And give it time, because there genuinely isn't a shortcut – only the long game, and the long game is the whole point.

Georgia Perry is an award-winning Australian illustrator who creates distinctive, colorful work for leading entertainment, beauty and cultural clients worldwide.

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