Art Style vs Art Series | What Artists Get Wrong 

I like how you explained the separation of someone's art style versus a series within a person's overall extended range of art styles. Thank you for that. It is one of the most maddening things to walk into a place and inquire about renting a booth or space within an art studio. There's this mindset that we have to fit into the one little box and do one style all the time and that just drives me bonkers because I have such a wide range of styles and interests and I'll do a series and then people just assume that that's all that I do and it's like definitely no. I can't put myself in a box like that. I love making art way too much to be put into a box.

Thank you! I've been painting for years - not my professional job- jsyk. I appreciate how you organized the series as being a part of a larger concept. I keep getting stuck in one focus and get bored; but feeling like I have to fully commit. Thinking that I cannot return to a favorite approach because 'I've been there, done that.' I think I need to make an artist statement to clarify my 'periods' and perhaps explain my process more specifically. I go back and forth along the spectrum of approaches, non-representational abstract, cubism, impressionism, all the other styles, to full life like detail and back again. I like tying things together with common themes, helpful; but otherwise I'm a conglomeration of different artist personalities. Anyways, I ramble... thanks for reading. I'm going to listen to your video again.

Hullo Robin, after working as a freelance artist for over 35 years and working in multiple mediums and styles doing what the client wants, I have semi retired and I’m doing things that I want and I find that my “style” is semi realistic but illustrative. I am trying to be more impressionistic with my soft pastel work, that I just picked up two years ago, for the very first time. Now in learning a new medium and discovering fun! I purchased your book to not only support you but to look into painting with oils again, I say again, but I have only completed 1 oil portrait! I have always painted with watercolors and then “fine artwork” painting with acrylics. I enjoy your videos. I hope you were able to create more as time goes on as you further your artistic expression and discover your “style “. Please take care and have yourself a great day

I missed your videos so much!

Thank you for this thought provoking video. I've been all over the board trying to figure my style. I am a newish (2018), self taught artist trying to find my way. Doing a series would, I think, help me stay more focused. I want to try everything and paint the world and the beauty therein. I've been watching you a couple years now, watching you grow on so many levels. This video of your journey has helped me understand mine. Thanks again, you rock Robin!

Totally on board. I love doing serieseses. It's the thing that makes me feel the most artistically fulfilled. I'm working on an oracle deck with different suits, so it's like several series within a series, including some clock paintings, which were my favorite to do. I'm also hoping to "go bigger" soon and paint some huge canvases but I have to finish this series first. Love the channel.

As I watched this video I could feel relief pouring over my shoulders. I'm at a stage in my own art-making where I'm no longer intermediate and trying to "master" things, but in that process of learning and creating I have not once ever settled on a style, even when I've tried hard up stick to one way of doing things. I've often thought to myself, "why does my art have to be a certain way? Is it just to get and keep people's attention? I'll never be able to do that." Your explanation of style vs series shed a lot of light on the way I think about my art, how it's perceived, and how I could proceed in the future with much less worry about just the "look" of my artworks. I think a series is exactly what I need to unlock some of the potential that I've kept locked up in my brain for the past year. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Robin, as always. ❤️

missed you so much!! clicked instantly, love the energy in ur vids :'3❤️

100% agree with you. Thank you so much for vocalising it. Big love to you!

Love some Robin! ❤

Thank you Robin for this explanation. It helped me a lot to see the differences in between these two concepts.👏😅

Chuck Close always said "style is embedded in process". A style comes naturally but really only after a lot of hard work. Artists who try to copy another artists' work and claim it is a style are really missing the bigger picture. That is more of a pastiche.

Yes🖤 series are great👏🔥

so helpful!

Thank you. You have made a long journey to be where you are now. Wonderful to think in series. So much freedom to experiment and no harm whatever we make. We have the freedom anyway, but do we dare to use it?

i just started creating my first art series ever, so this comes at a perfect time! great video (:

I need to focus on creating a series or a solid block of work, have figured out the styles working in, i like, just need to actually explore them more and maybe grow as a person/artist

Series are great. I love when artists create variations on the same (visual) theme. As for myself, I know exactly what I want to express with my art/style in general, I know what is important for me. And it embodies in specific pieces and series. I have just finished a 12-piece (four year long) series of portraits of scientists in lab interiors using the same color palette for all of them. The main caveat of creating series for me is… growth. I don’t like it when the beginning of a series (often seen in comic books) looks too different from the end. So, I feel that in the beginning it’s better to focus on smaller series (diptych/triptych) and to try to finish them in a narrower time span not to be disappointed.

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” In other words, it is your path, follow your path, and don’t let others decide what that is. Recognizing commonality with others is great! Use it on your path.♥️✌️Gorgeous painting, btw. You could have stopped at several places along the process of the painting, and others would have. Others would have done more, but it is yours!

cool point!

just a thought: pre-thinking (and over-thinking) and pre-planning an art piece (encoding all the wrenching anxiety in it) is so wrong compared to just create something rather spontaneously, just as the wind blows and maybe focus more on the craftsmanship accompanied with it. it seems to me, that the spontaneity might be the entrance (actual exit) of the cave. gosh, buthow do you people summon the energy and mind-set for art. almost impossible except at 10:50 pm.

Did you cut your hair again?

Your insight is startlingly accurate. I started a series that was pretty, well, enthusiastic. After some time, my tempo and enthusiasm were dragging. I decided to take your monthly challenge to do something completely different. It was stimulating, it pulled my creativity completely away from the onus of the style of my BIG series but most importantly it was fun. I took the second challenge, and it was twice as fun and intellectually consuming. The most important thing is that all the stimulation and fun translated straight to my other painting, like immediately. People could benefit from listening to you, you are right on the money with this perspective.

Thank you this helped so much. I feel very add about my focus lol. Series is a good idea

Being an old fart artist I've had a couple starting artists ask me about finding their style and I've always said the same thing, more or less elegantly depending on when I said it. Style is something that comes about from creating art, it forms organically as you learn what you like doing and like seeing in your work. I remember hearing Natasha Alegri speaking on the DVD commentary of season 1 Adventure Time saying that style was a series of choices and replicating a style was understanding those choices, why an artist made them and what was the result of them. So in approaching art with the mindset of creating series instead of style I think that very strongly ties into letting yourself discover what you enjoy, discovering those choices. And in that way hopefully be more open to allowing your art to continually grow with you and represent who you are at the moment of each piece rather than locking into a single expression. Just like yourself as a person you will see constants, points that appear in all your work that make it your own, but you will also see a continually evolving body of work to reflect the growth we should never leave behind in life or in art.

Thank you for this video! This is a topic I'm really passionate about because I see a lot of artists suffer because of this obsession of having an art style. It makes some artists not make art because what's the point of making art if you don't have a style. And then the artists who do have a style start to experience art block because they are putting themselves in a tiny box and it slowly kills their creativity. I have seen professional artists give advice to beginner artists that you HAVE to have one style and you have to choose one medium and focus on that forever if you want to succeed as an artist. And I'm like NO that's not how creativity works and it's not how style works and why are we forcing artists of all people in these little boxes. I get so mad about this because I used to be obsessed with finding an art style and now that I'm not, now that I'm working with series, I am making so much more art! This idea that you have to have an art style robs us of so much art that people are not making because they don't think it's worth to do art that is not done with a style. It's crazy! And especially because most people have a style already, for example the way I use color is pretty similar no matter what medium I'm working with. So yeah, working in a series instead of a style can be so good and i hope more people start to realize that.

Great perspective from a working artist! Lately I have been letting style surface at will by expanding my perspective for what beauty is, and at the same time applying my creative “knowledge” with exposures to reality in combination with feeling and movement.

Thank you for this video, this really resonated with my experience. I had a big art block during 2018/19 where I got obsessed with having to "pick" a style to continue to work in. I couldn't get over how this perceived choice terrified me, because I thought I would confine myself for the forseeable future to only draw like this one thing I chose now. It was impossible. I only really got over it when I began to paint again and just tried to do what looked good to me, rather than drawing like somebody else. Your idea of producing work to figure out what you do and how you explain art series really helps me to continue on this path :)

yes! what a way to put it. and it got me thinking... makes a lot of sense and feels more true to me. i could compare this concept you talked about with the beatles! i immediately thought of them; of their different periods, all the different music they created; and at the end we're all still able to tell when it's their music even tho their 'style' changed but really they were just trying different things and putting Them out there, whatever they were feeling/going thru... it allowed them to not get stuck in one place or particular 'style' but rather keep gaining skills and experience and excitement about creating. and it all added uo to their uniqueness... they were creating these 'series' and still being The Beatles, with a bunch of different skills and knowledge in their field and not only one style. i guess that's why i keep coming back to you, robin, as my favorite artist, it's because you're not affraid to experiment (maybe you are but you still try it) and put Yourself in your work so it feels very true and authentic. and truly you've been my number one source of inspiration as an artist and i take your advice and words to heart and your easiness and authenticity about it feel good to me.

Excellent, the language we use is significant to our mindsets and I think you nailed not just what the difference between a style and a series but why that difference is important. Dope shit.

I'm such a lousy friend for now just watching this video. 😅 It's a great thing that I like this piece so much. Congrats to whoever purchased it! 😁

Thank you for this video! I've been struggling to figure out where I want to go with my art and creativity and these tips helped me.

This is super helppul as a musician!

This is such a good concept! As a designer, I've been feeling stuck in the pieces I create for clients, but thinking of each client as a series of sorts also helps unsticking yourself while on a creative block

Love the short hair I cut my hair short literallyy two days ago and I'm fucking living for it