When anyone asks me “What’s your art style?” I want to say “Whaddaya got?” Especially when I first started out painting, I wanted someone to tell me what the options were. Over time, I’ve come to realize that style is not a multiple choice test and artistic choices are personal and infinite and arise from a strange brew of your unique interests, influences, aesthetic sense, and preferred process.
But what if it were a multiple choice test?
For each category, I’ve provided some examples of options, questions about your aesthetic taste (what sort of art you like), and pragmatic questions about process (what kinds of things you like to do).
Art Style Multiple Choice Test
Medium
If you’re here on this blog, you’re probably already doing or interested in watercolor. But as a thought experiment, or in case you’re looking to pick up another hobby, let’s think through your ideal medium.
Popular Options
- Drawing; e.g. pencil, ink, charcoal, pastel, colored pencil
- Painting; e.g. watercolor, oil, acrylic
- Sculpture; e.g. stone, clay, mosaic
- Block printing
- Photography
- Digital art
- Fiber arts
- Functional objects; e.g. pottery, jewelry, woodworking, glassblowing, metalwork
- Mixed media
Aesthetic Questions
- As an art fan/viewer, which mediums fascinate you?
- Which famous or not-so-famous works do you most enjoy? What media are they in?
- Do you prefer to look at traditional or digital art?
- Do you prefer three-dimensional or two-dimensional works?
- Do you prefer monochrome or colorful works?
- Do you prefer objects with a functional purpose as well as aesthetic?
Process Questions
- Do you prefer to work with your hands and physical materials in a traditional medium, or do you prefer to work at a computer?
- How’s your spatial reasoning? Do you find it easier or more difficult to think in three dimensions vs two dimensions?
- How’s your color vision / interest in working with color?
- Do you think a lot about functional design and have strong opinions about the features or shapes that make good functional pieces (e.g. clothing, tableware, furniture)?
- How important is it to you to be able to correct your mistakes? Do you prefer a medium where you can endlessly change things?
- Is it important to you to choose a medium that is travel-friendly and can be used on the go or en plein air?
- Do you have a studio space with adequate ventilation, or is it important to you to avoid toxic or smelly chemicals?
Genre / General Subject Matter
What do you want to depict?
Popular Options
- Portraits of people or animals
- Narratives (e.g. scenes from literature, mythology, history, religion, etc.)
- Landscapes
- Architecture or urban elements such as buildings and street scenes
- Interiors
- Everyday objects / still life
- Florals
- Food
- Patterns
- Abstract
Aesthetic Questions
- Thinking about your favorite art pieces, what are the subject(s)?
- What types of art pieces do you kind of gloss over or find boring?
Process Questions
- What do you find yourself doodling?
- What did you like to draw when you were a kid?
- What do you resist or find boring? For example, do you draw characters but not put them in context because “backgrounds are boring”? Do you sit in the park sketching your surroundings but edit out all the people? Do you only paint fruit if an art teacher makes you?
Realism & Level of Detail
Popular Options
- Realist / photorealist
- Impressionist / loose
- Abstract
- Surrealist / fantastical
- Illustrative / stylized
- Graphic / pop art
Aesthetic Questions
Do you prefer to look at or consume art that depicts real people, places, and things, or do you prefer imaginative or fantastical subjects?
Are you more drawn to art that is grounded in realism or art that is more stylized?
Are you more drawn to art that contains a lot of highly specific detail, or to art that suggest ambiguous ideas and relies on the viewer to work to interpret it?
Process Questions
- Do you consider your art to be a means of observing or documenting the world around you, or do you consider your art to be more of a means of sharing what’s inside your mind?
- When you think about the specifics that ground a scene in reality, such as light/shadow, human anatomy, or the branch structure of different specific types of coniferous tree, do you find yourself fascinated, or overwhelmed/bored? Are you interested in endlessly pursuing these rabbitholes, or would you prefer to handwave as much of this as possible?
- Are you interested in the mental challenge of figuring out the least you can do to create a specific impression?
- When you think about how you’d like to spend your time, would you rather spend ten days meticulously working away at a very complex piece, or would you rather make ten runs at the same scene only to throw nine of them away?
- Do you consider yourself patient and workmanlike or slapdash and manic?
Conclusion
The options I’ve provided here aren’t everything of course, and I’m sure I’ve missed major things in my brainstorm. But they hopefully provide a jumping off point for thinking about aspects of your preferred style. I asked questions about both aesthetics and process because I think it’s important to make art that you like, as an art consumer (and therefore important to think about what you like). But I also think it’s important to prioritize your enjoyment of the process – that’s what will help you stick with it!