Have I found my artistic voice? Spoiler: Nope!

From reading Lisa Congdon’s book Find Your Artistic Voice and slowly discovering what an artistic voice actually is and hearing how other artists discovered theirs I was constantly wondering what is my own artistic voice?

Have I found it? Am I on my way to find it? I think the answer to those are ‘idk’ ‘nope’ and ‘maybe’.

What have I found?

I know from doing an exercise shared by Hollie (Black and White Studios) that the five words I want to be portraying to the world is fun, relatable, honest, friendly, and helpful. I also know that I don’t want to be portraying a cold, mature, old fashioned, or corporate image either. 

I want to be someone that is easy to talk to and someone you’d share your problems with. I want to be someone who can help, but also doesn’t come across as a know-it-all, shouty pile of knowledge. I want to be known for my pretty lettering, fun illustrations, and pop culture references, but also for sharing my relatable artist struggles. 

The problem is, can I do it all? Who knows? I just need to keep going and making art. 

Then what?

One of the important things we need to remember is that all our idols also started out as beginners. Artists who didn’t know what they were doing, who didn’t have their voice nailed. Then one day something clicked and they fell into their voice by creating a giant pile of art, and guess what? Most of them are still venturing down that path, they still make mistakes and don’t know the right way forward. 

My favourite part of my current April Create Daily challenge is the fact that I’m trying new things. I’m trying things I used to do and forgot about when I moved onto the next big thing. I personally felt like I was in a bit of a rut and was just creating similar things that I knew would do well on Instagram and some of it I didn’t actually enjoy making. I was just doing it for the ‘gram.

But now I’ve pulled out my watercolour palette, and my carving tools, and my paint brushes. I’ve used up so much paper creating analogue which I haven’t done in the longest time since buying my iPad years ago. Buying that iPad and getting Procreate was one of the best and worst things I’ve done haha! As much as I’ve loved going digital I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to create analogue art. 

This challenge I think is all part of finding my voice, I’m trying out all these new things that may potentially stick and develop into the direction I actually want to go in. 

These blog posts are part of that direction, sharing honest and helpful articles, so I hope you stick around for the journey!

- Sophie

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