How to Develop a Personal Art Style – Basics & Experimentation | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 63

Hi there, Liron here! In today’s episode I’m teaching you how you can develop your own personal art style.

Many artists strive to grow and develop their own style, but there are many myths about what it takes, and the truth is much simpler than some may think!

We’ll take a bit of a philosophical approach, but embed a lot of practicality to it!

Personal Art Style

Probably every artist you admire has their own unique art styles. Artists who work hard and attain higher and higher levels of creation, tend to also have a uniqueness to their work.

There is something very charming around a distinct art style. This leads many beginner and aspiring artists to worry about developing their own style.

Which brings me to my next point…

Unique Art Style – Don’t Assume you Don’t Have One

This is extremely important.

I want you to understand that with enough practice, repetition and experimentation, everyone develops a unique art style.

It’s inevitable.

So instead of worrying about that, let’s focus on what we can do to ensure you develop successfully as an artist (:

Fundamentals & Experimentation

The way I see it, there are two elements to improving continuously.

Working on the fundamentals / basics – This involved doing the exercises and learning the techniques that are relevant to multiple art mediums.

An example for this would be composition, color harmony, matching values (in case you are doing realistic / representational / naturalistic art) and so on.

Experimentation – This involves breaking our own patterns, using work processes that are foreign to us, trying to work in a different style, using colors we aren’t used to and so on. 

Using these two together ensures your skills will grow, and your style will develop.

Remember that every experiment you do, every technique you play around with – these all add up and become a part of your style. By experimenting frequently, you widen your style’s possible spectrum of expression.

And with repeated work on the basics, you’ll ensure that your technical skills won’t deteriorate while you experiment.

This works very nicely with my concept of Inspiration & Isolation which you can read about here.

Everyone ELSE Will Recognize Your Style

I want to mention something I find amusing. Ironically, you will be the last person to recognize the uniqueness of your style.

That’s just how it goes for most people (unless it’s really unique and out there).

People started telling me about a year ago, that they could tell my paintings apart from others very easily.

I was very surprised to hear, but wasn’t able to see that myself.

Now I can better understand what they mean. There are many nuances. It’s in how you treat the edges, how your brush marks look. There are a lot of signature properties it’s hard to put in words, but easy to tell when they’re there.

Conclusion

I hope this all makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions and I’d be happy to expand on whatever you want me to (:

And with that being said, let’s move on  to the Artist Corner.

Artist Corner

In today’s episode I talk about Oliver Pyle, an English watercolor painter.

Oliver specializes in natural landscapes and rural scapes. His works convey serenity and calmness that I find very relaxing.

His work also taught me a lot about conveying your message with simplicity.

And Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Instagram for Artists – How I got 10K Followers | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 62

Hi there, Liron here! Today I will give you my BEST advice for success on Instagram, aimed at ARTISTS in particular.

This is based on an article I wrote that you can find here: How I Got 10K Followers on Instagram.

Instagram & Other Social Media Platforms

Let’s talk a bit about Instagram in the context of other social media platforms.

Instagram is undoubtably one of the HOTTEST platforms at the moment. Great engagement, very active users and a huge potential for success.

But before we dive head first, I want to provide a little caveat. Never put all of your eggs in one basket. Instagram is great now, but it won’t last forever.

Competition increases, engagement goes down and the organic reach will probably also go down with time.

So diversify and try to produce content for as many platforms as you can.

With that being said, let’s get started with the advice! (:

1. Posting A LOT

This is a no brainer. If you want to build an audience, you have to post regularly and post A LOT!

How much? As much as you can.

I think one post a day is the minimum. I personally do 3-4, but less than 1 a day is really little.

2. Hashtags

Hashtags are the main means for making your work discoverable. Make sure to use as many as possible (the maximum allowed is 30).

Also do your research and figure out which ones work for you. Rotate them around and try out new things.

3. Stories

Stories are really important for improving the connection with your audience. But I do believe they also help you reach new audiences.

Their reach is much higher than posts, and they are more easily accessible from the top area of the app.

So many people passively scroll through stories, but will never see most of your posts.

Also try using hashtags in stories. It increases their reach even more.

4. Engagement – Inside and Outside

Inside – by that I mean with your own followers. Reply to messages and comments.

Outside – engage with other peoples’ posts. Leave comments and likes. And make sure it’s all GENUINE. Fake comments are easy to spot, and hurt your brand.

5. Business Account

Not sure about this one, but it seems to me like the moment I switched to a business account my engagement and reach improved.

However, the irrefutable advantage of a business account is the access you get to the Insights feature.

This shows you your top performing posts and a whole host of useful information.

6. Buffer and Efficiency

Make sure to streamline your work process in whatever way possible.

Buffer is a really useful app for scheduling posts to different social media channels. Plus, for Instagram you can’t schedule posts, so it’s really my only way of reaching my audience at times when I SLEEP (haha, different time zones…).

Conclusion

I hope you found this episode helpful.

Instagram is such a hot platform at the moment, so I’m trying to squeeze everything I can out of it, while I can.

In the future it’s going to become harder to build an audience. It will be much more challenging to grow.

It was easier 2 years ago. And it was still easier 1 year ago. And it’s easier now than it’s going to be a year from now.

So go for it!

And with that being said, let’s move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

In this episode I talked about Dean Mitchell, and incredible painter working in several mediums.

His oils focus on people, while his watercolors feature scenes more often. I love all of his work, but his figurative paintings and portraiture are spectacular.

You can check out more of his work on his website: Dean Mitchell

Here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Going All-in on Instagram & What I Learned (for Artists)| Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 49

Today I wanted to share this update regarding the recent changes I made in my Instagram routine / strategy / tactics, and the impact they had on my presence on the platform.

Two Main Changes on Instagram

I changed two main things in my Instagram routine:

1. Increased post frequency

This did prove to provide faster growth, and it didn’t seem my audience “got tired” of my content (:

I basically moved from 1 post a day to 2-3.

2. Tons of stories

I used to post 1-3 stories a day, and sometimes zero. Now I’m doing as much as 15-30 stories. I’m also making sure I use hashtags there as well.

One last thing I did, though that was a little while before all of that, was changing to a business account. I wanted to get the analytics (:

The Results & Impact on my Instagram Account

I’ve been feeling the acceleration in growth in terms of followers, no doubt.

But the more important thing is the amount of messages and genuine comments I’ve been getting, which really blew me away.

The engagement went crazy too.

So we’re not talking only about quantity, but also about quality.

Future Plans

My future plans are basic – keep this new baseline, and increase / go above it as much as possible. I’ve been doing the occasional 4 or 5 posts a day too.

I will keep you updated on how it goes! (;

That’s all I wanted to share today. We can now move onto the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I’m featuring Ilya Ibryaev, a Russian watercolor painter.

His focus seems to be light, and I don’t mean that in the usual sense. His great talent is portraying actual light shining through trees and clouds. He focuses on simpler landscapes with more complex and interesting skies, clouds and light.

What I noticed he does is play around with edges and contrast, to create a strong illusion of light. It actually FEELS like you can see the light itself.

If you want to see what I mean, I actually found a GREAT article written on him over at Seamless Expression – a website about painting and watercolor that I LOVE: Ilya Ibryaev on Seamless Expression

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron