by guest artist/author: Nemo

One of the biggest points I try to drive is artistic “voice”. Call it style, call it feeling, but call it yours. We as individuals have our own personal flair. We hold something that no other living thing in this world has, we can think freely, we can imagine, we can do anything we want. I am saddened when I look at art and see that its already been done in history or when I see art and think I recognize the artist only to read the tag and see that a ‘copy-cat’ artist made it. Alright,  I won’t call it copying, but it’s close to it. I see this phenomenon in school too; young artists who always try a copy their teachers.

I love the television show, American Idol, so I use it freely to express my points about your ‘artistic voice’. Take guys like Mr. Adam Lambert. If you saw his run at being the Idol last year, you would have heard comments about his originality. Adam was masterful at taking an older song and make it current. Let’s look at his originality. Many of you might not like him, but put that aside for now. He is original and has a voice that can picked out from a 100 people.

Now look at your own art. Can someone who knows nothing about art pick yours out of 100 pieces? The winners of American Idol have the ability to take any song and make it sound like it’s their own. Make your art yours.

Now think about some of the greatest artists of all time. Van Gogh, with his unique brushwork might have painted the most famous painting ever, “Starry Night”. Every time another artist out there uses that type of brushstroke, people think of Mr. Van Gogh. The same thing can be said of Jackson Pollock and so on.

Okay, so how can we use our own artistic ’voice’ to help make us famous?

I have worked really hard most of my life to be a little different than most people. Back when I was developing my own ‘artistic voice’  I paid close attention whenever someone remarked on my artwork and said it looked like another artist’s work. After, I would research that artist and change whatever it was that made my art look like their work. I did this until I started getting comments like “wow, I’ve never seen anything like that before”.

Little by little with hours and hours of labor you can also develop something all your own and change the way everyone looks at your art. Be one of the greats – don’t be like one of the greats!

By Nemo

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The focus of Nemo’s art is not the subject, but the method by which he constructs it. Nemo was trained as an architectural draftsman with a desire to put his manual drawing skills to work.  Nemo uses various line weights combined with multiple styles of circles, spirals and swirls to compose the subject. The entire image is drawn freehand with the most primitive of tools, a #2 pencil with an accent of colored pencil on vellum drafting paper. With this, Nemo has truly found his own ‘artistic voice’.  http://www.artbynemo.com/bio.html

  Thanks for the inspiration, Nemo! See you on Twitter – Lori