Everything I draw ends up wearing a bow-tie

Anonymous asked: Hello! I've just recently been introduced to the world of cartooning and I'm struggling to find a personal style. I was wondering how your own drawing skills grew, and what you did to become comfortable with it. Right now I feel like I'm trying to hard to replicate others work because I'm not yet confident enough to sit down with a blank piece of paper. Any advice? Love your art, especially the gravity falls stuff 0:

Well gosh, hard question- sense of style and personal style is something that develops with time and experimentation, and copying to learn is a great way to go about that! The only thing I would warn about that idea is really trying to mimic one and only one particular style; you can box yourself in and make yourself into a professional, forgetable copycat by doing that. What you want to do is copy and learn from a lot of different places and people- and by learning I mean thinking about what you are copying. Look at the artwork, think about what it is that draws you to it and makes it appealing (is it the shapes? the linestyle? the expressions?), and then try smushing one or more of those qualities together with another from a different source! One of my favourite daydreaming pasttimes is to take two totally different ideas and smash them together, it’s how I’ve come up with a lot of my stories but it also works for drawing styles. Try combining two of your favourite artist’s styles into one hybrid version, or replicate a drawing you like in a different style- learn by copying, but don’t just be a photocopier. Most of all don’t feel pressured to match a style that is popular. What is ‘in’ isn’t necessarily what you like, nor is it necessarily good! There is no right or wrong way to draw. Play with your art, and keep playing, because playing is learning; it is taking ideas and shoving them around and messing about and making something new. If you keep doing that you will not only develop your own style in time (and that sneaks up on you, trust me, it was a big surprise when someone first told me that I had one!) - but you will become a much more versatile artist than someone who has only one, if distinctive, style. I am constantly trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things, and not all of them work! But that’s how you learn what doesn’t work, and that is just as valuable as knowing what does.