How to Find Your Own Unique Art Style

As an artist, discovering your own unique art style is like finding your voice in the world. Whether you’re selling your art online, through retailers, or at a craft fair, having a distinct look sets you apart from the crowd. But how do you find your own unique art style when there are so many options to choose from?

Try New Things

Start by experimenting! Digital and traditional tools let you try out all sorts of techniques and ideas. Especially when you are first starting out, don’t be afraid to play around with a wide variety of mediums to discover what you enjoy working with. Mistakes are part of the process, and sometimes they lead to unexpected discoveries. Every stroke of your brush or pen helps shape your style.

Pro Tip: Have a sketchbook that is designated just for you to practice, create ugly art, experiment, and test new ideas without the pressure of having to finish it or share it with anyone else. I also recommend this book: Wreck This Journal.

Take a Class or Follow a Tutorial

Taking online art classes and following tutorials have been a huge help for me in defining out my own art style. YouTube and Skillshare have loads of classes on different software, techniques, and styles. Implementing what you learn and putting your own twist on it can really help you find your unique look. In person classes can be really inspiring too! So, don’t be afraid to sign up for a class or watch a tutorial— it could make all the difference in your creative journey.

Get Inspired by Other Artists – Past and Present

Take inspiration from artists you admire. Look at their work closely—how do they use color, shape, and theme? But it’s not just about the famous artists; check out what’s happening in the art world right now. You’ll pick up tips and trends that can influence your own style. Be mindful not to copy others though!

Pro Tip: Visit art galleries and outdoor art events regularly in your city to get inspiration from a mix of classic and contemporary artists.

Trust Your Gut

Listen to your instincts. What subjects excite you? Which colors make you feel something? What types of marks or mediums do you enjoy working with the most? Your style should reflect who you are, so trust your inner voice when making artistic choices.

Keep Improving

Refine your work over time. Look back at what you’ve created and think about how you can make it even better. Listen to feedback from others, but remember to stay true to yourself. Improvement is about polishing your style, not changing who you are.

Pro Tip: Make a lot of art. It can take years to develop a cohesive art style, and having a large body of work to look back at makes it easier to identify consistencies which will help you define your style.

Pictured below: One of my old mandala illustrations vs. a newer piece. Note the improvement!

Be Flexible

While it’s important to have a consistent style, don’t be afraid to try new things. Your style can grow and change over time as you do. Adapt to new trends while staying true to what makes your art unique. This could look like incorporating a trending colour, like the Pantone Color of the Year, or a trending theme into your work – but making it your own. This could also be trying out a new software or medium to create your work.

Learn More

To learn more about how to find your own unique art style I highly recommend this Skillshare class: Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity.

man and woman having a conversation about art styles

Create Your Legacy

Remember that your style is your brand. Make sure your work reflects who you are as an artist, but also as a unique person. Pour your heart into every design you create. Whether it’s original artwork, digital illustration, pattern designs for clothing, home goods, or paper products, let your art speak for itself and connect with people around the world.

Finding your art style isn’t a one-time thing—it’s a journey. Embrace the process, and trust that your unique voice will shine through in your work. So, grab your favourite tools and start finding your art style today!

Cheers,

How to Sell Your Art on Spoonflower – and Cheapest Way to Get Samples!

~ Julie ~ 1 Comment

Are you an artist wondering how to sell your art on Spoonflower? You’ve come to the right place.

I’ve spent the last year uploading nearly 300 designs to Spoonflower. I’ve made over $1000 so far, so it’s definitely been worth it for me! And that’s why I wanted to share it with you today.

Spoonflower is a print on demand retailer, similar to Redbubble or Society6, who specialize in fabric featuring seamless pattern designs. But they also sell other products like wallpaper and home décor!

So if you’ve already got some seamless pattern designs that you’ve created, or you’re just starting to dabble with pattern design then Spoonflower is definitely worth taking a look at.

Completely new to seamless pattern design? I’ve got a couple of tutorials to help you out:

sell your art on spoonflower cheater quilt

How to Sell your Art on Spoonflower

Open a Spoonflower account and start uploading! It’s a pretty simple process to add your designs but there a few things you should know before getting started.

The main thing is that your designs won’t be enabled for sale in the marketplace until you have purchased samples.

I know, that sounds annoying, but I found a way to get the samples for really cheap so don’t worry about it too much. More on that below.

Store Front

The store front shows the designs of yours that have been enabled for sale. You can customize it with a banner, profile photo, short intro/description and social links.

If you want to view the designs that you have uploaded but have not enabled for sale yet, you can see them under Designs Not for Sale, or you can see them in your Dashboard.

Products

Spoonflower mainly sells fabric!

They cater to people who are looking for unique fabric to use for their own projects, either for personal use or even to sell in their own Etsy store for example. It’s really very satisfying to see people create things like clothing and accessories using fabric you’ve designed.

I’ve only ordered the cheapest possible fabric swatches and I don’t sew myself, so I can’t tell you much about the quality. However, they seem to have a broad range of fabric types for all sorts of projects. And plenty of return customers.

They also sell wallpaper and other home décor items like tablecloths, bedding and pillows which look really nice in the mockups, as you can see.

Ease of Upload

Uploading to Spoonflower can be a bit tricky. Your design MUST be a SEAMLESS pattern repeat. You can upload a non repeating pattern, but if someone buys it Spoonflower may contact you to fix it. So keep that in mind, I suggest to save yourself the headache and just check your patterns first.

Below is what it looks like after your pattern has uploaded to the site. This is where you can add your title, description, tags, and edit the size and tiling of your print.

Underneath Design Size is where you can adjust the size of your pattern (Click Smaller or Bigger). Hit Save Changes and then you can click on where it says Your Design is available on 20+ Products to see how it looks on the mockups.

Wallpaper is on a separate tab, next to Fabric as you can see on the top. The wallpaper size can be changed separately and is not affected by any changes in the Fabric tab.

Once you’ve uploaded your design and added the title, tags and description, you have the option to make it public. This means people can see it, but they still can’t buy it until you order samples and enable them for sale.

The Cheapest Way to get Samples from Spoonflower

The cheapest way to get samples is by getting the “Cheater Quilt” which includes 42 different pattern swatches. The cost for one of these quilts is $18.50 USD (in April 2022).

I wouldn’t really call it a “quilt” in the way you might think, and it probably won’t be too pretty unless all of your patterns match nicely together. Mine definitely don’t!

What I suggest doing is wait until you have uploaded 42 designs and then order the quilt, then you can go through and enable all of your patterns for sale at once.

Below is a photo of one of my ugly cheater quilts with bonus appearance by Miss Kitty!

The whole buying samples thing sounds annoying but I actually think it’s a good thing. This barrier to entry means you kind of have to be a serious artist to open up a shop.

I find that it keeps out the people who are just trying to make a quick buck with sub par or stolen designs. It also means less competition and higher quality designs overall.

In this video I demonstrate step by step how to set up and purchase the cheater quilt from Spoonflower.

Earnings and Payment

Spoonflower pays twice per month if you reach the $10 threshold by the payout date.

The payment dates are around mid month and again near end of the month. This is actually much faster than other Print on Demand sites that can make you wait months for your earnings to clear. They pay via Paypal.

I’ve had some orders cancelled after they had already paid me, in which case they just deducted it from my future earnings. So, no big deal.

Marketing

Spoonflower will market their top selling designs, and also new art that is submitted to the Spoonflower Design Challenges and ranks near the top. I highly recommend entering these challenges to help you get more exposure to both the people who work at Spoonflower and potential customers.

There is also a hashtag for challenge entries on Instagram which is a great way to participate in the community: #SpoonflowerDesignChallenge.

It’s easy to pin images to Pinterest from their site, so that helps for marketing. They have several stunning mockups which look great on social media.

However, most people just seem to find my designs through searching on Spoonflower’s marketplace. So having good key words and SEO, accurately describing your design helps a lot.

Shipping

Spoonflower is located in the U.S. and I have found they offer reasonable shipping costs to Canada, and even more reasonable within the U.S. The shipping is generally pretty quick, and you can choose a faster shipping method if desired. Sometimes they even have free shipping promotions which work for Canada, however, I’m not sure about overseas.

Conclusion

While I was skeptical about Spoonflower at first due to the barrier to entry with the purchase of samples, it’s actually a great platform for artists to sell their art online and join a community of other creative people.

However, it is more for someone who designs seamless patterns, and serious artists who have a little bit of money to invest in their art business.

I hope this article has helped you learn how to sell your art on Spoonflower, and decide if it’s right for you!

Cheers,

How to Make a Seamless Pattern in Procreate

~ Julie ~ 4 Comments

Did you recently get an iPad with the Procreate app? If so, congratulations! If you’re a surface designer like me, you’re probably wondering how you can make seamless pattern designs in the Procreate app!

I’m here to show you my method of creating seamless offset patterns in Procreate. Keep in mind there are multiple ways to achieve the same result!

Check out my video below for step by step instructions to make seamless patterns on your iPad with Procreate.

How to make a Seamless Pattern in Procreate

Begin with a square canvas (ex. 4000 x 4000 pixels).
Draw your motifs (I drew some simple strawberries).
Arrange your motifs so they are somewhat close to the center of your square canvas.
Create a group from your motifs and duplicate it.
Hide your original group.
Pinch the new group together into 1 layer.
Create a new layer and fill it with a solid color background (can be any color, it doesn’t matter).
Group the layer with your motifs with the solid background layer.
Duplicate this group 4 times.
With snapping and magnetics ON, move each of those layers into the 4 corners of the document.
Now you can delete those solid background layers.
Turn back on your original group of motifs and arrange them so they fit nicely between the others.
Now you have your seamless pattern tile!

If you want to test your pattern swatch to make sure it all lines up correctly, I’ve shown you how to do that too in the video above.

Once you have your final seamless pattern you can export it and use it for many projects or upload your patterns to print on demand stores so they can be printed on products!

Here’s an example of what I created with my strawberry pattern. I added some more florals to it.

(You can shop this design in my Redbubble store by the way!)

I hope you’ve found this post helpful and you learned how to make a seamless pattern in the Procreate app!

You may also be interested in these posts:

Cheers,