DTIS aka Draw This In Your Style
DTIYS is a challenge that I found years ago on Instagram and to this day is very popular. It involves drawing a character/illustration of another artist in your style. It allows you to let your creativity run wild, without answering the toughest question that so often makes a blank page scare a person, which is::
What should I actually draw?
This, seemingly simple question, could inhibit my creative reserve for a long time. Because at this point, expectations enter the scene. From the ambitious ones, to convey a certain thought with my work, to draw attention to an issue important to me, to include my emotions; to the trivial ones: that I should like my illustration and enjoy working on it. And also, which is important in the era of social media and in the work of a freelance illustrator – to please others.
It’s not surprising that since one has to face such issues even before starting to paint, a person can feel overwhelmed and so artblocks often begin. That is, longer periods in which, despite a great desire to create, one avoids starting work.
Such states are actually unfamiliar to me. At a time when I don’t have the energy to figure out my approach to the world, the message of my creation, and in all these important but difficult issues, I have a few tried-and-true ways to get down to business.
One of them is precisely the DTIYS challenge. For several reasons:
- instead of inventing a scene, a character to paint from scratch – allows us to choose a simpler way to interpret an already existing illustration. Such limitations paradoxically allow me to enter the creative process more easily
- I usually choose for the challenge the work of an artist who inspires me, an interesting character, an interesting color palette – these aspects in a package provide me with the pleasure of making my own version
- such an interpretation is often an excuse for me to analyze the original work, to learn and look for solutions that, reflecting its character, would be “mine”
- it is also a very cool “community” challenge thanks to the hashtag allows you to see how others have dealt with the challenge and delight in the diversity of techniques, styles, interpretations.
DTIYS MurtBurt in my style
I came across the illustration by @murtburt on Instagram and was captivated by both the coziness of the scene, the character design and the color palette. I also have a huge weakness for tree reading girls. Maybe because it happened to me too 🙂
I often like to do not only a stylistically different version, but also use a different medium. The original illustration was painted digitally. Therefore, at my place, alcohol markers, forgotten for a long time, entered the desk.
But first I created some small sketches in Procreate to experiment with the composition of the scene. This was very useful and guided me to a composition based on circles, which helped give the tree branches an interesting “twist” and in the finished illustration they seem to frame the figure.
As usual, while working, the suspicion came over me that maybe an illustration done with watercolors would look more interesting, but after all, there’s nothing stopping me from finding the next interesting challenge and herding watercolors to work, right? Besides, it was high time to unleash my collection of cheap markers (you can see their review on my YT channel), which for the past few months has mainly served as a colorful ornament in my studio.
