Further research into the realm of illustration style, I have come across it being mentioned that style isn’t taught per se. As simple and as common sense as it sounds - your style isn’t GIVEN to you in school. Style is who you are, an amalgam of your experiences, your education, your beliefs, your personal taste, even as practical as your biological disposition to a particular technique or aesthetic. Most of these are things you pick up, and your mind does the rest in choosing what is important and what is not.
So if style is “who we are” it is also “who we are becoming.” Style therefore naturally changes in the course of an illustrator’s life. And mosts artists will agree, that one doesn’t stop learning to create art. Hence it all matters as to who and what influences you.
Yet there are certainly moments where you will be given projects that do not fall into any style you’re familiar with or a style you feel competent in expressing. In animation, this happens quite often. Yet there are the turnarounds, character model guides to aid the accurate representation of each new animated character in every animated project.
In a career in illustration, you may very well go through your life with only one style. (I’m guessing that most artists have at least 2 though.) Popular cartoonists can certainly make a living off their serialized comic strips - never then having to do business in another style. On the flip side, there are illustrators that acquire and juggle multiple styles - hoping to be the first in any publisher’s mind for any possible project. Why can some artists carry multiple styles and why can others only a few? The answer is a varied as one person is from another.
