If you’ve ever struggled to find your own artistic style, sometimes the best thing to do is to imitate and learn from the artists who inspire you. 24-year-old Sam Skinner did just that when, in a bid to develop her own cartoon style for a webcomic project, she decided to take on the #StyleChallenge—a popular social media hashtag that encourages creatives to draw multiple self-portraits in the style of different cartoon characters.
From Tim Burton’s goofy gothic style to the wide-eyed, cutesy style of The Powerpuff Girls, Skinner spent one year on the project developing her digital drawing skills. The self-taught artist explains, “Doing this project was simply to help me become more familiar with doing graphic/digital design.” Having started with an initial list of 100 cartoon characters, one of the most challenging parts of the project was deciding which styles to include. Skinner reveals, “I ended up having a list of close to 100 characters I wanted to do, but narrowed it down to 50 by drawing the choices randomly out of a hat.”
Skinner’s illustrations are not only uncanny depictions of iconic characters, but they’re an inspiring chronicle of her artistic development, and proof you can perfect your craft with dedicated time and practice. Skinner reveals, “This is one of the first things I’ve done that I’ve been proud enough about to show off to my people. Since this whole project took around a year for me to complete, with a brief hiatus for school, I definitely would say my skills got better the more I worked on it.”
Follow Skinner on Twitter to keep an eye on her upcoming projects.
In a bid to develop her digital drawing skills, self-taught artist Sam Skinner decided to take on the #StyleChallenge—a popular social media hashtag that encourages creatives to draw multiple self-portraits in in the style of different cartoon characters.
Skinner spent one year on the project, completing a total of 50 self-portraits.
The artist’s illustrations are not only uncanny depictions of iconic characters…
…but they’re an inspiring chronicle of her artistic development, and proof you can perfect your craft with dedicated time and practice.
Next up: Disney, Sonic the Hedgehog, and much more.