Creative Business, Creative Clarity Series
Published on May 19, 2025

Part 5: What Style Really Means

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2847 words // 15min read time

Hello, lovely crafter! Today, I’m releasing Part 5 of 12 of the Creative Journey Series. I am so proud of this series, as it’s a deep dive into the life cycle of the creative art experience. I hope you will read the tips and insights, and decide where you are in the journey, gleaning any help that you can to guide you through to the next step. Head to the main page if you’re just jumping in and you want to start from the top. Enjoy!

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[Crochet Pattern Shown: The Lacy Hexagon Blanket]

3 Phases: Intro and Quick Links

The Creative Journey Series has an over-arching theme of 3 phases, each one with 4 parts, making the whole 12-part series. Here’s a quick overview again of the 3 phases, just so you know where you are in the journey. I’ll be adding this intro reminder at the top of each part through the series and hyperlinking Parts 1-12 as I go.

Phase 1, Imitation and Inspiration: Steps 1-4 are a deeper dive into Phase 1 of the Creative Journey. You can read more in my series post Creative Clarity, Episode 2: Phase 1 of the Artist’s Journey and a Deep Dive into the Realm of Copying

Phase 2, Innovation and Identity: Steps 5-8 break down Phase 2 of the journey, which is the topic of Creative Clarity, Episode 3: Phase 2 of the Artist’s Journey and How to Beat Creative Burnout

  • Part 5: What Style Really Means (You are here!)
  • Part 6: Experimentation and the Messy Middle
  • Part 7: Surviving the Burnout Phases
  • Part 8: The Power of Finding Your Unique Voice

Phase 3, Integration and Ascension: Steps 9-12 will be a dive into Phase 3 of the journey, but this episode of Creative Clarity has not yet been released. I will be sure to release that episode before we begin Step 9.

  • Part 9: Sustaining Your Style
  • Part 10: Cross-Pollinate through Fusion and Play
  • Part 11: Staying True Despite Style Challenges
  • Part 12: Artistic Evolution – Never Stop Growing

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Introduction to Phase 2: Innovation and Identity

As we step into Phase 2 of the Artist’s Journey, it’s worth pausing to look back. Phase 1 was about gathering information, techniques, and inspiration. During Parts 1-4 of this series, we talked about learning by imitation, getting inspired, and finding the courage to begin. It was about laying down threads. But now, the path curves inward.

Phase 2 is where things deepen. Where you begin to take risks, push boundaries, and feel the growing pains of turning inspiration into something original. This is where ambition meets uncertainty, and where your creative voice starts asking to be heard in its own right.

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Part 5: What Style Really Means

The first leg of your creative journey was all about learning the basics, following patterns, and mimicking what inspired you. I talked about practicing your craft without yet feeling the pressure to innovate. Now you’re at the moment where personal style begins to surface.

Your own personal style appears, not all at once, but steadily through your repeated choices and inner instincts. It’s not about defining your voice, rather it’s about noticing it and then giving it space to grow.

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Style Isn’t Invented, It’s Learned

Style is the visual appearance of a work of art that relates it to other works by the same artist, or to one from the same time period, location, school of thought, et cetera. This Wikipedia definition reminds me of the paraphrasing of Alfred Hitchcock that I shared in Episode 2, that personal style is just plagiarizing yourself.

Before you try to “find” your style, ask yourself: What keeps showing up in my work when I’m not trying?

Finding a personal artistic style involves a journey of self-discovery and exploration. It’s not about copying others, but about finding what resonates with you and expressing it through your art. This process often involves experimenting with different techniques and mediums, while also reflecting on your own interests and passions. Trusting your instincts and embracing mistakes are crucial steps in developing a unique style. 

Practice and Be Prolific

  • Create consistently: The more you practice, the more you’ll develop your skills and discover what works for you. 
  • Focus on your strengths: Identify your natural inclinations and build upon them. 

Refine and Refocus

  • Narrow your focus: Once you’ve explored different styles, try focusing on a few that particularly resonate with you. 
  • Develop your signature: Find the unique elements that set your art apart from others. 
  • Be comfortable with being different: Embrace your individuality and don’t be afraid to stand out. 

You don’t need to construct a perfectly branded aesthetic. You just need to recognize the creative fingerprints already embedded in your work. Your style is not a costume you put on. It’s a pattern of decisions you make unconsciously. The more you create, the more those patterns become visible.

Action Prompts

  • Flip through your past work: swatches, blankets, notebooks, sketches. What shows up repeatedly?
  • Write down five choices you’ve made across multiple pieces. These are style clues.
  • Ask a creative friend: “What do you notice in my work that feels consistently ‘me’?”

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Listen to Your Work

You don’t need to analyze every project. Just observe them with soft eyes. Your creative style is what makes your work “feel like you.” It is a unique feature that is present in your works. To experiment with style, start by researching the basics:

  • Impressionism
  • Art nouveau
  • Minimalism
  • Photorealism
  • Conceptual art
  • Art deco
  • Constructivism
  • Surrealism

Once you have seen the wide variety of styles you can apply them to your craft and start creating. Eventually, those unique features will emerge. What are the themes, colors, forms, or processes you’re repeatedly drawn to, even when you try something “totally different”?

Explore and Experiment

  • Try different mediums: Experiment with various materials like paint, charcoal, pencils, digital tools, or even mixed media.
  • Explore different techniques: Try different approaches to drawing, painting, sculpting, or other art forms.
  • Don’t be afraid to make mistakes: Embrace errors as learning opportunities and stepping stones to new discoveries. 

The projects that feel easy often carry your clearest creative voice. Let your style emerge by embracing self-discovery like having a conversation with yourself.

Trust Your Instincts

  • Follow your passions: Focus on topics, subjects, and styles that genuinely resonate with you. 
  • Be patient and persistent: Finding a personal style takes time and dedication. 
  • Don’t be afraid to change direction: Your style will evolve as you grow and learn. 

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Create Like Nobody’s Watching

It’s easy to get distracted by what your audience wants or expects. But personal style often lives in the work you create without an audience in mind, when the pressure to perform is off. To discover a personal artistic style, prioritize creative freedom by creating without a specific audience in mind. Embrace serendipity and trust your instincts. Your truest style might be in the project you never planned to finish.

Sometimes that means pulling out your sketchbook or yarn bin and just making something you’ll never share. That quiet practice lets you explore instinct over impression. There’s a particular kind of freedom that blooms when we take the audience out of the room. When we create not for Instagram, not for applause, not for critique, but just for ourselves. “Create like nobody’s watching” isn’t a call to ignore community, rather it’s an invitation to bypass performance. When every brushstroke, stitch, or sentence is subconsciously tailored for validation, we start editing before we’ve even begun.

This mindset can distort the development of personal style. Instead of exploring what feels right, we chase what looks right to others. We second-guess bold color choices, abandon strange but thrilling ideas, and smooth out the edges of our uniqueness. But in the sketchbook you don’t post, the draft you never send, the blanket you make just because it delights you, you can experiment without expectation. That’s where style lives: in the margin between instinct and permission. In the SOLITUDE.

So make ugly things. Let your work be messy, incoherent, or off-brand. That’s not failure! That’s freedom. And often, it’s the first real glimpse of your voice in its rawest, most beautiful form.

Steps towards finding your artist’s identity

  • Give yourself the time you need.
  • Practice every day and explore different styles.
  • Read a lot.
  • Create a lot of samples of your work.
  • Give yourself an art prompt as if you were someone’s client.

Ways to find your style in solitude

  • Keep a “style journal” where you record what felt good (or off) in each project
  • Set a timer for 20 minutes and free-create without intention
  • Make a mini project just for you, with no sharing or selling in mind

These hidden pieces hold the DNA of your style.

A Word on the Importance of Audience

Can art exist without an audience? That’s part of the job. In 1872, George Sand, a French novelist, wrote that the artist has a “duty to find an adequate expression to convey it to as many souls as possible.” To put it more succinctly, art needs an audience.

Can you make art without intent? Some say yes, art is simply an expression of the creator’s innermost thoughts and feelings, pure and unbridled. Others argue that all art is created with a specific purpose or goal in mind, whether to evoke an emotional response, tell a story, or make a statement.

When you make public art, for display or for sale, it is important to consider your audience. It’s just during the personal style investigation that audience is removed.

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Experimentation Is About Curated Curiosity

You don’t need to reinvent yourself with every piece. Instead, start experimenting within limits. Controlled variation helps reveal the constants in your style. Style is what you keep, not everything you try.

Action Items

  • Keep the same motif, but switch the yarn weight or palette
  • Limit yourself to 3 colors for a few pieces in a row
  • Choose one element (like structure, speed, or stitch texture) to vary and let the rest remain familiar

This type of experimentation helps separate what’s style from what’s play.

Additional Prompts

  • Which part of your process do you never skip?
  • What rule or limitation could help you see your choices more clearly?

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Your Style Is a Map, Not a Destination

So many artists get stuck thinking their style needs to be pinned down, branded, or permanently defined. But your voice is not a finished product, it’s a perspective. It’s a lens through which you see and make.

To cultivate your evolving voice:

  • Don’t chase trends. Follow what holds meaning.
  • Think of style as a set of trusted defaults.
  • When your work shifts, ask: “Is this still in conversation with what I care about?”

Your style doesn’t need to be static. It just needs to be trustworthy. You can rely on your style to shape your decisions, allowing your creativity to stretch without losing its center.

This is relevant when looking at how I construct the Lacy Hexagons Blanket. One of the ways that I created my own style was by joining as you go in a method that allows you to start the blanket joining anywhere in the blanket layout and organically add on pieces to the blanket.

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A Blanket That Marked the Shift

Sometimes your style reveals itself through your hands before your mind can name it. The Lacy Hexagon Blanket that’s featured in this post is the perfect example. I started with a very old lacy hexagon motif that I found, and then I turned that vintage feel on its head by working the motifs in bright colors.

This technique stems from a theme that I have repeatedly used in my works that I call “Vibrant Vintage”, which is a study on taking old lacy and frilly crochet patterns, and using bold and bright colors for them in order to breathe new life into the patterns. These older patterns are typically worked in baby pink or blue, white or off-white, and other pale colors.

What began as a reproduction quietly became a remix. Looking at these blankets now, I see my style reflected not in the motif design per se, but in the energy of the whole. The shifts in tone and color story, and the openness to letting the yarn tell me something new. That’s what personal style feels like: a conversation between your technique and your intuition.

Want to try this exercise for yourself?

  • Start with an existing motif or structure
  • Choose yarns that feel like your current voice, not just your stash
  • Make conscious changes and let some things evolve as you work
  • Document what choices came from habit, instinct, or risk

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More Tips for Finding Your Style

Here are some tips to help find your style through innovation:

  • Style is discovered when you copy yourself. In Phase 1 we copied the works of others, and now it’s time to copy yourself to see what sticks.
  • Create copious amounts of art. Make sure you have engineered your schedule and your home workspace so that it is conducive to creating art every day.
  • When a project is complete, put it away. Start fresh with a clear mind for the next project. This way you will see what elements are carried forward, and what elements are left behind.
  • Personal style emerges the more works you create. Your style is the line that connects the common elements that reveal themselves in your projects. The elements that you leave behind are not destined to be part of your style.
  • Niche down to focus on one thing. When you have experimented with tons of projects, it’s time to narrow it down to what you think will be your “thing.”
  • Find your style in the message of your work. When you create art, you are imparting a message to the viewer. Sometimes, meditating on what that message is will help inform your style.
  • Style can be a structured framework. Think of style as those common elements that you know will be present in every project. The rest of the project’s elements can be variable, and that’s where the creativity and individuality of the pieces comes in.
  • Stop focusing on how your art will be perceived. To develop your style, follow your instincts about what feels good and right to you in your artist heart.

This innovation phase may take a long time, and that’s okay. Taking your time to find your personal style is very important, since style is what sets your work apart from that of other artists. There will definitely be some challenges along the way as finding your style will take copious amounts of ambition.

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Creative Voices to Follow

These artists and writers speak directly to this part of the journey. When choosing inspiration artists, if you’re feeling unsure of your ability, ask yourself what you would do if fear was eliminated from the equation.

  • Lorna Simpson – Explores identity through repetition and concept-driven visuals
  • Quinta Brunson – Shows how voice and tone evolve through lived experiences and courage.
  • Yayoi Kusama – Repetition and pattern as personal vision; letting obsession become voice.
  • Alma Thomas – Developed a signature abstraction style through movement, rhythm, and joy later in life.

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10 Bonus Tips for Cultivating Personal Style

  1. Copy yourself. What you repeat becomes a roadmap.
  2. Make daily. Repetition deepens rhythm.
  3. Put it away. Let distance reveal your patterns.
  4. Track your joy. Follow what feels intuitive, not what looks impressive.
  5. Name your quirks. Style often lives in your “weird.”
  6. Let go of trends. Clarity grows when you stop seeking approval.
  7. Focus your themes. Your message is part of your aesthetic.
  8. Niche down (eventually). Explore widely first, then center.
  9. Create structure. Use consistent elements as anchors.
  10. Trust the slow burn. Let your voice mature over time.

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Thank you for reading this part of the Creative Journey Series! Next Monday, we will look at Part 6: Embracing the Messy Middle. Part 6 guides you through experimenting with your art, and helps you uncover pieces of yourself through challenges and trials.

Hope you have a great week, and happy crafting!

Rachele C.

Order my crochet pattern book: The Art of Crochet Blankets

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