Top 5 'History-Making' Art Styles to Explore for Beginners Who Think They Can't Draw - Goh Ling Yong
"I can't even draw a stick figure."
How many times have you heard someone say that? Maybe you've even said it yourself. It’s a common refrain, a self-imposed label that shuts the door on a world of creative expression before you’ve even had a chance to peek inside. This idea that "drawing" is a magical, inborn talent—and that if you don't have it, you're out of luck—is one of the biggest myths in the art world.
The truth is, art is infinitely more than just replicating what you see with perfect, photorealistic precision. Throughout history, the most revolutionary artists weren't the ones who drew the straightest lines; they were the ones who broke the rules, invented new visual languages, and showed us new ways to see the world. They prioritized emotion, color, and ideas over technical perfection. And that, my friend, is fantastic news for you.
This post is for everyone who has ever felt that creative spark but quickly extinguished it with self-doubt. We're going to travel back in time and explore five history-making art movements that are surprisingly perfect for beginners. These styles don't demand a steady hand or years of academic training. They ask for something much more interesting: your unique perspective. So, grab a cup of tea, silence your inner critic, and let’s dismantle the myth that you can't draw.
1. Fauvism: Unleash Your Inner "Wild Beast" with Color
Imagine a world where a tree trunk can be bright red, the sky can be a fiery orange, and a person's face can be a patchwork of green, blue, and yellow. Welcome to Fauvism, one of the most vibrant and liberating art movements of the early 20th century. The name itself comes from the French for "wild beasts" (les fauves), a label a critic mockingly gave the artists after seeing their shockingly bold and non-naturalistic use of color.
Led by figures like Henri Matisse and André Derain, the Fauvists decided that color didn't need to describe an object's reality; it needed to express the artist's inner feelings. They squeezed paint directly from the tube and applied it in thick, impulsive brushstrokes. The goal wasn't to create a realistic scene but to evoke a mood, a sensation, or a memory. This is precisely why it's a perfect starting point for beginners. It frees you from the pressure of getting the colors "right" and instead encourages you to choose colors that feel right to you.
You don't need to know complex color theory or how to blend perfectly. In fact, the Fauvists often placed complementary colors (like red and green, or blue and orange) side-by-side to make them vibrate with energy. It’s an art style built on intuition and joy.
How to Get Started with Fauvism:
- Materials: A cheap set of acrylic or gouache paints will do wonders. You want bold, opaque colors. Grab a few brushes of different sizes and some thick paper or a small canvas board.
- Choose a Simple Subject: Don't start with a complex portrait. Pick something simple from your home: a bowl of fruit, a houseplant, or the view from your window.
- Forget Realism: Look at your subject, but then intentionally choose "wrong" colors. Is your banana yellow? Paint it purple. Is the tree outside green? Make it a dazzling pink. Don't think, just feel.
- Bold Strokes: Apply the paint in visible, energetic brushstrokes. Don't worry about smoothing everything out. Let the texture and energy of your marks become part of the final piece. The result will be a painting that is uniquely yours—an expression of your personal vision, not a copy of reality.
2. Abstract Expressionism: Paint Your Feelings, Not Figures
If Fauvism is about using color for emotion, Abstract Expressionism is about channeling raw emotion directly onto the canvas through gesture, form, and color. This was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence, and it completely changed the art world in the mid-20th century. Artists like Wassily Kandinsky (an early pioneer of abstraction), Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko believed that art could communicate profound spiritual and emotional truths without representing anything from the physical world.
This is the ultimate permission slip to let go. For anyone who freezes up when asked to "draw something," this style is a revelation. There are no objects to get wrong, no proportions to miscalculate. The subject of the artwork is the process of its own creation: the drips, the splatters, the sweeping brushstrokes, the layered colors. It’s about the physical act of painting and the feelings that pour out of you during that act.
Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we constantly emphasize that creativity is a process of discovery, and no style embodies this better. Abstract Expressionism isn't about the final product looking like something; it's about the final product feeling like something. It's a conversation between you, your materials, and your deepest emotions.
How to Get Started with Abstract Expressionism:
- Create a Mood: Put on some music that moves you—it could be intense classical, chaotic jazz, or ambient electronic. Let the sound guide your hand.
- Use Your Whole Body: Don't just sit and paint with your wrist. Stand up. Use your whole arm to make large, sweeping gestures. This is often called "action painting" for a reason!
- Unconventional Tools: You don't even need brushes. Grab a palette knife, an old credit card, a sponge, or even a stick. Jackson Pollock famously dripped and poured house paint from a can. Experiment with how different tools create different marks.
- Focus on Layers: Start with a base color that reflects your current mood. Let it dry a bit, then add another layer of marks or colors. Build up the complexity over time. There's no "done" until you feel it's done.
3. Cubism: See the World in Shapes
When you hear "Cubism," you probably think of Pablo Picasso's fractured, multi-dimensional portraits. It can look complex and intimidating, but the core principle of Cubism is actually a fantastic tool for anyone learning to see as an artist. Picasso and his contemporary, Georges Braque, wanted to challenge the idea that a painting could only show one viewpoint at a time. Why not show the front, side, and back of an object all at once?
To do this, they broke down objects and figures into their basic geometric components: cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. They weren't trying to draw a perfect guitar; they were trying to capture the essence of a guitar from every possible angle simultaneously. This shifts the focus from realistic rendering to analysis and reconstruction. If you can see the simple shapes that make up a complex object, you've already won half the battle of drawing.
Cubism teaches you to deconstruct the world around you. Instead of seeing a face, you see ovals for eyes, a wedge for a nose, and a cylinder for the neck. This analytical approach can be less intimidating than trying to capture every subtle curve and shadow. It's like building with artistic LEGOs—you're using simple blocks to create something complex and compelling.
How to Get Started with Cubism:
- Pick a Simple Still Life: A coffee mug, a book, and an apple are perfect subjects.
- Sketch the Basic Shapes: Look at your objects and try to draw only the fundamental geometric forms you see. A mug is a cylinder with a C-shape attached. An apple is mostly a sphere.
- Introduce Multiple Viewpoints: Now, draw that same object again, but from a slightly different angle, right on top of your first drawing. Draw the top of the mug as a circle and its side profile as a rectangle, and let them overlap.
- Create Facets with Lines: Use straight lines to connect the different viewpoints and break up the larger shapes into smaller, angular planes or "facets."
- Use a Limited Palette: Early Cubism often used a muted palette of browns, grays, and ochres to keep the focus on form. Try creating your piece using just a pencil for shading or just two or three related colors.
4. Pointillism: Create Magic with Dots
Pointillism is an art style that looks incredibly complex from a distance but is beautifully simple up close. Pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in the late 1880s, this technique involves creating a complete image out of nothing but tiny, distinct dots of pure color. It's less about drawing and more about patience and a fascination with how color works.
The science behind it is called "optical mixing." Instead of mixing blue and yellow paint on a palette to make green, a Pointillist artist would place tiny dots of blue and yellow right next to each other. From a distance, your eye does the work, blending the dots together to perceive the color green. This gives the final painting a unique, shimmering luminosity that you can't get from pre-mixed colors.
For the beginner who dreads blending or making smooth lines, Pointillism is a godsend. Your only task is to make a dot. And then another. And another. It’s a meditative, methodical process that allows you to build up an image slowly and deliberately. The pressure is off, and you can get lost in the rhythmic, calming act of applying dots to a surface.
How to Get Started with Pointillism:
- Easy Tools: You don't need fancy brushes. Cotton swabs (Q-tips), the back end of a paintbrush, or fine-tipped markers are perfect for making consistent dots.
- Start with a Simple Outline: Lightly sketch a very basic shape on your paper—a sunset, a simple landscape, or a piece of fruit. This will be your guide.
- Think in Color Zones: Instead of thinking about objects, think about areas of color. The top of your apple might be a zone of reds and yellows, while the shadow underneath is a zone of blues and purples.
- Dot, Dot, Dot: Fill in each zone with dots of pure color. To make a darker area, place your dots closer together. For a lighter area, space them further apart or mix in dots of white or yellow. Don't worry about perfection; focus on the overall effect.
5. Surrealist Automatism: Let Your Subconscious Do the Drawing
What if you could draw without thinking at all? That's the radical idea behind Surrealist Automatism. The Surrealist movement, which flourished in the 1920s, was fascinated by the psychology of the subconscious mind, dreams, and hidden desires. Artists like André Masson, Joan Miró, and even Salvador Dalí experimented with "automatic drawing" to bypass the conscious, rational mind—the part of you that says "this doesn't look right"—and tap directly into the creative wellspring of the unconscious.
Automatism is, at its heart, sophisticated doodling. It involves letting your hand move freely and randomly across the page without any preconceived plan. You let the line wander where it will, creating a tangle of spontaneous marks. Afterward, you look at the abstract mess you've made and find images within it, much like seeing shapes in the clouds. You can then refine these shapes, add color, or simply leave the abstract scrawl as a finished piece.
This is perhaps the most powerful technique for breaking through a creative block. It completely removes the fear of the blank page because there is no right or wrong. The goal is not to produce a masterpiece but to surprise yourself. As I've learned from mentors like Goh Ling Yong, sometimes the best ideas come when we stop trying so hard and just let our intuition take over. Automatism is the purest form of that philosophy.
How to Get Started with Automatism:
- The Scribble Exercise: Take a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Close your eyes, think of nothing in particular, and let your hand move across the page for 10-15 seconds.
- Find the Forms: Open your eyes and look at the scribble you've created. Turn the page around. What do you see? A face? An animal? A strange landscape?
- Elaborate and Refine: Use a darker pen or colors to emphasize the shapes you've discovered. Add eyes, legs, or shadows. Turn the abstract into something representational, or simply add color to the abstract shapes you like.
- Embrace the Weird: The results will likely be strange, dreamlike, and unexpected. That's the whole point! Celebrate the bizarre creatures and worlds that emerge from your subconscious.
Your Turn to Make History
Art history isn't a stuffy textbook of rules you must follow. It's a thrilling story of rebels and innovators who proved, time and again, that there is more than one way to be an artist. Fauvism, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Pointillism, and Surrealism aren't just historical styles; they are philosophies that empower you to create on your own terms.
They teach us that art can be about feeling over form, ideas over illusion, and process over perfection. They are a standing invitation to pick up a tool—any tool—and make a mark. You don’t need to be able to draw a perfect portrait. You just need to be willing to express yourself.
So, which of these history-making styles are you going to try first? Pick one that resonates with you, gather some simple materials, and give yourself one hour to play without judgment.
Share your experiments and experiences in the comments below! I’d love to see what you create.
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
Stay updated with the latest posts and insights by following on your favorite platform!