Since the first post of this series was called style, I'm calling this post substance. Though the first post was more on substance, and this one is more about style. Huh. Oh, I know.
STYLE PART II: SUBSTANCE.
Style is a tool to get to substance. Too often do people try to teach voice, or "learn" it, when it is by definition unteachable and unlearn-able, because it is a personal thing that comes naturally with how you take your approach. Note, though, that's how you take the approach, the approach itself being completely learn-able, though fairly intuitive: use slang to express an informal voice, for instance. That's different from style, though, to an extent: everyone has their own patterns of speech, and it's possible to analyse a text to tell who wrote it by how often they use pronouns and articles.
Your own personal style is just something you can never escape. Style can't be taught, only learned.
My own style... I don't know. It's hard to look at your own style, isn't it? It's just one of those unquestioned things. All I can really do is compare my own style with those of others, which I've already done regarding my artwork. I think I need to improve my line work, I think I need to learn to color more evenly (I apparently already am like super good at knowing where light and shadows hit a three-dimensional subject, and I think I should just color on a different layer or within a selection or something. Really the inhibition to color inside the lines is what messes you up.)
I guess I should actually talk some about substance here, but as I said above, so I'll say below: this one is more on style and the first one was more on substance but it's too late to go back and change the name now even though I did anticipate this happening since I had written most of this one before I had the other one and I had already entitled it "Substance" so why not go for a theme name and this is all very pointless anyway isn't it so I'll stop. So, I guess I'll just say this: remember there is a difference between style and substance, and you shouldn't criticize one when you mean the other, etc.
Maybe I have more to say on the subject, maybe I don't. We'll see where the wind takes us tomorrow.
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