There’s a moment every artist knows well: staring at someone else’s work and feeling that mix of awe and envy. The colours, the lines, the way it just works. And then comes the whisper, “maybe if I draw like that, I’ll finally find my style…”
But here’s the tricky part. Style isn’t something you borrow. It’s something that sneaks up on you while your hands are busy making. You can trace someone else’s steps all day long, but what makes their work theirs is the part you can’t replicate; their lived experiences, their quirks, the way they see the world when nobody’s watching.
So how do you find your own? You start by making a mess. Try every tool, every subject, every wild idea that crosses your mind. One week it’s watercolours bleeding across the page, the next it’s charcoal smudges on your fingertips.
None of it has to be good. In fact, some of it should be spectacularly bad. That’s the soil where originality grows.
Patterns start to emerge without you forcing them. Maybe you’ll keep coming back to bold colours, or always seem to end up drawing plants, or your lines have a scratchy nervousness that feels oddly alive. These aren’t accidents, they’re your fingerprints showing up on the page. The more you work, the louder they get, until one day you realize your sketchbook already knows your style, even if you don’t.
The real art is when you stop chasing and start noticing. Your style isn’t something you discover in a lightning strike of inspiration. It’s something that reveals itself slowly, like watching a film develop in a darkroom.
So don’t worry about copying, and don’t obsess over being “original.” Just keep showing up. Fill pages. Make mistakes. Follow your curiosity. Sooner or later, your style will find you, and it’ll feel less like invention and more like recognition; as if it was always there, waiting for you to see it.
