Different artistic approaches

The idea of having a unique style is something that every artist wants to achieve at some point; something that is easy, comfortable and furfilling.

Something that happens a lot in artistic communities online is the cross style challenges. 

There are two general approaches that I've come across in places like tumblr: 

One where one artist draws an iconic piece of his/hers (sometimes they draw themselves) into different others artistic styles. The other one is the opposite, which is taking some one else's design or concept and reducing it with your own style. 

Both approaches are usually used with a practice approach, helping the artist get out of an artistic block, source of quick inspiration, get people out of their comfort zones or just pure practice. 

The first case is something that I've briefly tried myself. In a way of admiration to the originality of the artist who's style I was trying to imitate I got myself to do some practice and tried quick drawings but paying attention to the details that make the style so unique. This exceesise was fun and certainly very useful to practice my observation skills. 

The other option, where you take something existing and transformed it into your own style, is something I've seen a lot in competitions and tributes. My favourite one is, again part of tumblr, where people try as a challenge to complete their own version of the pokemon 'Pokedex'. The variety of styles that you get to see around is absolutely incredible. Having the challenge to 'redesign' at least 151 characters and keep them under a similar style certainly must be hardwork. 

Just like this challenges, there are other ones going in tumblr, and the artistic community there certainly like to keep each other challenging and busy.