explore different styles

When you get into art, you would want to explore the world of art as much as possible. This can be done through attending art galleries and exploring the web. Finding your own style is extremely hard to do and it takes time and dedication. People often develop a style from being exposed to different forms of art and taking a bit of inspiration from each kind, then claiming it as your own. It can also be developed through being exposed to a general subject such as comics or anime. Finding your own style is NOT that important but it's the act of exploring different styles and doing research that will develop your art in general. You'll obtain knowledge through looking art in someone else's perspective.
  These past couple of days I've been searching on the web for inspiration because noticed that 90% of the art that I do is based on just my college's requirements. In other words I haven't been doing a lot of what I personally want to do. I came across a youtuber called animated decisions and her sketchbook for calarts really helped me approach art from another perspective. From that point on I looked up matisse's art and was totally awed by his use of lines and contour. I recently also got involved with marker drawing and currently playing around with it.
  When doing art, you'd always want to explore your limits through different use of mediums as well. It might be intimidating at first but if you spend time on it, you'll probably learn the basic concepts of it within a week.

 The first picture I copied off of one of "animated decisions's " sketchbook pages. At this point I really just wanted to get into the hobby of drawing in this new style that I have discovered. I wasn't extremely confident so I used pencil first then outlined it with pen. I then used prismacolour markers to colour the couch and background. Notice I leave some parts of the couch blank and it creates 3-dimension and a sense of shadows which was learned through observing light and doing tons of blind contouring/ contour (drawing without lifting your hand off the paper and without looking at the actual drawing; just the figure). I specifically chose light grey and the light peach since they are contrasting colours. Both of them are also slightly egg tinted so it gives the picture aesthetics and it's appealing to the eye.

This second picture is when I started to explore this style through the us of my imagination alone. I first tried to design a character which didn't really match the style I was going for. The character was also stiff. The second character, I was more aware of what I had to do and I learned from my mistakes from my first design. I even became more confident with my lines and added a nice loose action pose for the character. It just goes to show that through drawing more, you get more confident and your lines become less stiff. I then went over with pen and marker, trying to capture the folds of the shirt and capturing the shadow of the shirt. Again, I used contrasting colours to make my character stand out (Orange contrasts with great and grey). After that I drew a contour drawing of my mom and some cartoon drawings off my head.

Have fun exploring! :)