how do you find your style?

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I'd suggest you simply trust in two innate skills: the coordination in your arm (shoulder-elbow-wrist-fingers-drawingtool), and the coordination in your mind (desire-imagination-perception-learning). Your style will generally come from a combination of what you want to think about and what kind of strength and precision your arm has to work with.

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I think this is where part of my problem comes into play, mostly in part due to my Asperger's Syndrome I believe. This connection that most people share between these two, the body and mind doesn't work as it should with me. Even just speaking is problematic. I can say things very eloquently in my mind, but when I go to speak those words something gets lost between the mind and body (or somewhere between one part of the mind and another) and things come out worded entirely differently, awkwardly, slurred, sometimes stuttering.

It wasn't until recently that I noticed that this was happening with my art as well. I used to be really clumsy in gym but never took notice of it until I learned more about my Asperger's. I'm sort of surprised that I didn't make the connection with my artwork until recently as it's the same sort of thing.

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This sounds like: you want to draw realism, but can't quite keep the visual in your mind while you're pushing your arm around.

I find that it's common to focus on the target in mind up until the last second before the arm starts to draw the first line, and then the target blanks out of the mind while watching the line being drawn. You end up focusing on the line, how thick it is, how the curve is coming out, all the imperfections of the surface, how it cuts through the whitespace. The goal is completely out of mind over those few seconds.

It's coming out cartoony because you're effectively focusing only on the lines being drawn, and you're good at visualizing a couple of lines on a page into a cartoon. (This is actually a good thing, but it does severely undermine attempts at realism.)

How do you turn this around? Well, it requires a lot of willpower initially, and a lot of motivation to practice. You kind of have to reject the natural tendency to focus on the line being drawn, and continually reimpose the image of what you're aiming to draw in your mind.

Working on strengthening your arm is good too, because lessening any flaws it brings to the table will also lessen mental distractions.

Unfortunately, this kind of process is slow and frustrating because it's really hard to go against one's natural mentality. But if you want to draw any particular style, you have to be able to get those images into your head and to lock them in while you draw.

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I think that this most explains why I am having such a hard time with my art. My art has simply been just an application and evolution of lines on paper. I haven't been able to keep an image in my mind for very long while drawing. As soon as I begin drawing that image is lost and it's simply become mad scribbling to assemble anything that looks good, whether it looks anything like my initial concept or not. I wonder if this is due in part to the ADHD facet of my Asperger's or some other aspect?

I'm still learning to focus on one thing at a time and not let my mind spaz from one thing to the next. Is there anything I can do to help me maintain a mental image long enough to get it down on paper? Should I also try developing my skills outside of this practice so that I at least have some foundation skills to work with while trying to get my mental image down on paper/canvas?

As it is it's become very frustrating to draw. I get very apprehensive even just thinking of drawing again. My practice became less and less over time until it became non-existent and trying to start up again fills me with wave after wave of anxiety. I'm just noticing as I type that it seems like my mind is running on hyperdrive while my body seems only capable of running at impulse. It's like my mind is much to fast for my body to cope with. I'm finding this very frustrating, watching s the imagery in my mind evolves at amazing speeds and as the evolution of my ability to express myself not only fails to keep up but seems to be burning out and failing.

Is there anyone out there that knows of anything that might help me escape this metal trap I seem to have caught myself in and find a way that I can begin expressing myself again? I don't know if I'm ready yet to simply dive right into to the practice, practice, practice method of things at this point in time in my life. If there isn't anything that I can do in the meantime I think that I'm going to go insane as this mountain of creativity wells up inside of me without any way to express it. It feels like it's eating away at my insides, much like when people hold their anger in rather than let it out in some constructive manner. To think that creativity could be so destructive to oneself.

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Do you use photoreference at all? That might be a way to break through. It might not be exactly the picture that you have in your mind, but it will discipline your hand/eye to a degree to work together (I always use photoreference, because my mind gets too jumpy and I lose the mental image once I start putting it on paper, because I just don't have the skills yet to translate what my mind wants onto the paper. So I make due with what I have.)

Another suggestion? When I get mentally blocked from drawing, I try another creative outlet. Generally writing. All of the characters I draw regularly for myself and my bf have rich backgrounds and intertwined stories, so I go write for a while. I don't have all of the backgrounds down on paper, so I work on that. It's a creative outlet, and gets the mental juices flowing. And I find that before long, I want to draw again. I need to express visually what I've been describing in words.

I don't know if this will help or not, but it helps me.

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I'm still learning to focus on one thing at a time and not let my mind spaz from one thing to the next. Is there anything I can do to help me maintain a mental image long enough to get it down on paper? Should I also try developing my skills outside of this practice so that I at least have some foundation skills to work with while trying to get my mental image down on paper/canvas?

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I often get an idea for a picture and can see it complete and rendered in my head. Then it fades away as I start to draw. I'm at a point in my development where I can still move forward, but after the initial idea the execution becomes a real chore and I usually despise the picture by the time I'm done with it.

I would suggest you do a lot of copying, perhaps even tracing pictures, so that you can develop coordination in your hand without being burdened by the question of what to draw. This would be a good time to develop a sense of anatomy and proportion as well.

Then when you do something from your head, be open to your subconscious impulses. If your thoughts move on to other images, let them. Sit down and draw on a piece of paper. Just doodle whatever comes into your head. It doesn't matter if things overlap or are cluttered. Then put it aside for a while. When you come back, see if there are any interesting images in the page and, if so, redraw them without all the other clutter.

This 3d model started out as a box. I was just practicing doing 3d heads. As it developed it started to remind me of someone, so I continued to shape it in the ways that seemed familiar. Eventually I realized that it reminded me of Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville) so I got some refs of the actor and made some of the details more precise. I think its one of my better 3d busts precisely because its not something I'd consciously choose to do.

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<a bunch of really long quotes and stuff used to be here but I shortened it down a bit>

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Do you use photoreference at all? That might be a way to break through. It might not be exactly the picture that you have in your mind, but it will discipline your hand/eye to a degree to work together (I always use photoreference, because my mind gets too jumpy and I lose the mental image once I start putting it on paper, because I just don't have the skills yet to translate what my mind wants onto the paper. So I make due with what I have.)

Another suggestion? When I get mentally blocked from drawing, I try another creative outlet. Generally writing. All of the characters I draw regularly for myself and my bf have rich backgrounds and intertwined stories, so I go write for a while. I don't have all of the backgrounds down on paper, so I work on that. It's a creative outlet, and gets the mental juices flowing. And I find that before long, I want to draw again. I need to express visually what I've been describing in words.

I don't know if this will help or not, but it helps me.

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Those are some good suggestions there for me to try my hand at. Thanks.

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I'm still learning to focus on one thing at a time and not let my mind spaz from one thing to the next. Is there anything I can do to help me maintain a mental image long enough to get it down on paper? Should I also try developing my skills outside of this practice so that I at least have some foundation skills to work with while trying to get my mental image down on paper/canvas?

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I often get an idea for a picture and can see it complete and rendered in my head. Then it fades away as I start to draw. I'm at a point in my development where I can still move forward, but after the initial idea the execution becomes a real chore and I usually despise the picture by the time I'm done with it.

I would suggest you do a lot of copying, perhaps even tracing pictures, so that you can develop coordination in your hand without being burdened by the question of what to draw. This would be a good time to develop a sense of anatomy and proportion as well.

Then when you do something from your head, be open to your subconscious impulses. If your thoughts move on to other images, let them. Sit down and draw on a piece of paper. Just doodle whatever comes into your head. It doesn't matter if things overlap or are cluttered. Then put it aside for a while. When you come back, see if there are any interesting images in the page and, if so, redraw them without all the other clutter.

This 3d model started out as a box. I was just practicing doing 3d heads. As it developed it started to remind me of someone, so I continued to shape it in the ways that seemed familiar. Eventually I realized that it reminded me of Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor from Smallville) so I got some refs of the actor and made some of the details more precise. I think its one of my better 3d busts precisely because its not something I'd consciously choose to do.

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I've actually thought about doing the copying/tracing thing. Next paycheck I'm going to buy a large pad of printer paper and go to town on a couple of ideas. I may need to get a small lamp to to put under my small glass end table. If you'll notice from my deviantART gallery that's how I used to get my ideas onto paper originally. I'm also working my way towards a scanner and printer which will probably help with this as well. I can scan in reference materials and edit them for what I need them for in Photoshop or another program and then print them to trace with them. Hopefully this all will help my art in the long run. Thanks for the feedback. It looks like I was heading down the right path with a few of my ideas after all and knowing that someone else is suggesting the same thing makes me feel more confident in my choice.

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looking at the all the wonderful art work in this forum I see a lot of different styles. I see ultra-realistic and others that are more cartoony. But they're all great pieces. How do you find the style that works best for you? I've been struggling with my art because I maybe I try to hard for realism and it comes out cartoony to the point of looking like a child drew it. If I went for cartoony to start with, maybe that would be better? I dunno...

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Do not worry about style. Style is the last thing to worry about in art. Learn to draw through doing a lot of bad drawings, style will develop naturally.

Today at the studio, we were working on pre-production/pre-visualization for a project. The first words out of my art director's mouth, "Just draw. You'll need to get out a lot of bad drawings first before you find something you like..."

Put simply, artists are folks with a lot of line mileage under their belts

I agree with the above. I think style is what other people use to define your own work. I think to you it's just your own work. It may not have the exact qualities you're striving for at the given moment, but what is inherent about it is your outlook.

You "can" change that, add to it, evolve it... but like anything it takes practice, hard work, and in my personal opinion a lot of absorption of what inspires you. It's not about wanting to draw like someone you love, it's about wanting to draw period!