Types of Painting Styles: The Spectrum From Realism to Pure Abstraction

Painting styles sit on one line. At one end is photorealism, where the painting is glued to its source and every edge is accounted for. At the other end is pure abstraction, where nothing on the canvas represents anything and you get to see what you want to see. Every style anyone has ever named, from art history or from Instagram this morning, lands somewhere between those two ends, and what moves a painting along the line is how far it gets from its source and how much of the painter is in it.

That’s the map. Most artists who can’t find their style already understand the map, and they’re standing in front of it asking the wrong question. In the Mastery Program lesson on the style spectrum, I open with this: I really don’t care what you like. Just because you like it, you might want to paint it, and then you spend months spinning your wheels feeling like the only person on earth who can’t find her voice. You found somebody else’s voice. The question that works is different, and we’ll get to it after the map.

What are the main types of painting styles?

There are nine stops on the spectrum, and the honest way to read them is from most representational to least. Start at the left.

Realism and photorealism. The painting is a faithful account of the source. Realism was a named movement in the nineteenth century, and painting started loosening up around the same time photography arrived. Photorealism pushes the other way, until the painting could pass for the photo. This is slow, methodical, systematic painting, driven by excellence, and it wants tiny brushes and a temperament that enjoys them.
Expressive realism. Still clearly realistic, but the marks are quicker and looser and you can feel the hand that made them. A city scene where the buildings are right and the brushwork is alive. It’s a much faster way to paint than realism, which is why it suits so many different temperaments.
Impressionism. Getting wilder. The difference from expressive realism is mostly color and interpretation. Impressionism records how you responded to the outside world, so it interprets light, color, and the way the brushstrokes stack, where expressive realism mostly interprets form.
Interpretive and transitional styles. Now you’re painting from memory or from an idea, with the source barely glanced at or not present at all. When Basquiat painted his friend Andy Warhol, he wasn’t sitting across from him rendering what he saw. He painted his own internal picture of the man. That’s what this stop is: your soul on the canvas, with observation a long way behind you. Picasso lives here too.
Whimsical, conceptual, and playful styles. Further still from observation. This is your vision of a thing, made up out of your head. Think of Romero Britto’s wine glasses and flowers: a painter at this stop might glance at a real glass to remember the shape, and might not bother. You can keep a color palette in front of you, but you aren’t married to the source or to its proportions.
Stylized painting. You change proportion, color, or form on purpose. A neck elongated, a cat’s head enlarged, features shifted. Some of it is rooted in a real source and then pushed; some of it is entirely invented. Every one of those changes is a choice made from a position of skill.
Abstract realism. Two worlds married on one canvas. Passages of real, rendered form sit next to passages of pure abstraction, and the painting holds together anyway. This is the style Dimitra Milan paints in, and it’s one every temperament can pull off, which is a big part of why it’s so popular right now. There’s an enormous amount of freedom inside it, and you can read a fuller breakdown in our guide to abstract realism.
Abstract representational. A spin-off of abstract realism that departs further from realism. The painting represents a human being, or a landscape, and you know that’s what it is, but it’s also plainly abstract. How far it leans toward abstract and how far toward representational is up to you. I painted in this style for many years, and it’s another one any temperament can do.
Pure abstraction. Nothing fully representational. It can feel like a boat, a landscape, a submarine, two jesters, a castle, and that’s the fun of it. The painting doesn’t tell you what it is. You do.

Is that every style? No. But every style you’ll ever be shown fits on the line somewhere, and that’s the point of the line.

What’s the difference between a painting style and a painting technique?

A technique is how the paint goes down, and a style is how far the finished painting sits from its source. Glazing, scumbling, palette knife work, alla prima: those are techniques, and we cover 35 of them in painting techniques. You can paint impressionism with a knife or a brush. You can paint photorealism in acrylic or oil. The technique changes the surface, and the style is about interpretation, about what you kept from the source and what you replaced with yourself.

That’s why “types of painting” searches get you two very different lists depending on who wrote the page. One list is mediums and techniques (our guide to the different types of painting covers every medium). The other is this one. If you came here to learn how to do something with a brush, the techniques guide is the better page. If you came here to figure out what kind of painter you are, keep reading.

How do you know which painting style is yours?

You know by what you can imagine yourself making, and liking a style has surprisingly little to do with it. The art you love, the painting you’d hang in your living room and stare at with a cup of coffee, is usually your opposite. I call it your hug. It comes from the outside and wraps around you, and it’s often the exact thing your temperament can’t produce. In the lesson I put it this way: “I’m heavy-handed, I’m clunky, I’m messy.” I can be decisive and bold, and I can lay paint down fast. Soft transitions, one perfect poetic line, a serene minimal canvas: that’s my hug, that’s the art I want to own, and I can’t do it for the life of me. If you’ve never asked yourself this question, our guide to how to find your art style walks through it from the beginning.

So for every stop on the spectrum, run the same test. Put yourself in the seat, brush in hand, about to make that thing. Could you make those brushstrokes? Would you want to, for hours, week after week? That’s a question about temperament before it’s a question about skill. A softie who loves blending isn’t going to be happy laying down fast, violent strokes, and a painter who’s messy and quick is going to resent three days of tiny brushes.

The other version of the test is the shirt. A shirt you’d wear is part of your identity. The shirt your friend wears that you admire, the one you’d never put on yourself, is a hug. You have to get to where you can tell hug from you instantly, and once you can, you can place yourself in a neighborhood on the spectrum and start to see roughly where your style is going to land.

In the Mastery Program we do this with a temperament model, because the same temperament that decides how you handle a brush also decides which stop on the line you’ll love living at. Realism belongs to the artist who’s a refiner through and through. Impressionism tends to draw the reflective painter who enjoys stacking marks. The full model is a whole section of the program, so I won’t reproduce it here, but the principle is simple enough to use today: look at how you like to move, and let that pick the style.

I watched my daughter Dalia learn this the hard way. She admired dreamy, romantic, highly rendered paintings and tried to paint them, with pre-planned sources and small brushes and hours of rendering, when her own temperament wanted speed, spontaneity, and an open-ended plan. She burned out and started saying she hated painting. When she finally switched and painted the way she was actually built, her paintings immediately got better, and she enjoyed painting again. She’s still drawn to the romantic pieces. She just stopped trying to make them.

Do you have to pick one style?

No, and you don’t have to join anything either. You can marry impressionism with expressionism with realism. You can paint a figure that’s completely realistic through the face and dissolves into stylization by the hem. You can combine abstraction and realism in a dozen different ways, which is why three abstract realists can look like three completely different painters. The spectrum is a set of ingredients now, and there are no rules left about how to combine them.

That’s new. For most of art history you had to react to the movement before you, belong to a group to get shown, or follow a trend so a gallerist would take you. None of that is required today. We live in a moment where nobody has to discover anything new in art or rebel against anything old. You get to follow beauty, as long as you can do it. What is beauty to you that you can do? I’ve said that should be a T-shirt, and I mean it, because both halves of the sentence matter.

One warning about mixing. Borrow from the artists you admire freely, but don’t copy every ingredient of one painter’s recipe, because then you’ve made their painting. Take the way one artist uses black, the way another handles negative space, and a subject that’s yours, and the combination will be yours too.

What if you don’t love painting in your style?

Then one of two things is true: you’re painting in the wrong process, or you need more skill, and there’s a clean way to tell which. If you catch yourself thinking, “If I could just draw a portrait in proportion I’d happily sit here with music on for hours,” you’re lacking skill, and the fix is practice. That’s a happy place waiting on a technique. But if you’re thinking, “I don’t want to sit here staring at this source, it’s so boring, I need more,” and the results keep coming out flat and frustrating, the process is wrong, and no amount of mastering it will make you love it.

Out of everything in the whole program, this is the line I’d underline. You have to love your process. If you love doing your art, plenty of people will love the art. If you don’t, all of that anxiety and resentment ends up in the painting, and nobody wants to live with that. I don’t even like my own art much. I like other people’s art. What I love is the doing of it, the problem in front of me, the thing I have to solve. That’s what keeps me at the easel, and for you it might be the opposite: you might want easy, and restful, and beautiful. Everybody is different, and the spectrum is wide enough for all of us.

So pick the stop you can paint from, mix in the neighbors that feel like yours, and watch out for the trap of painting your hug. The style you’re looking for is the one you’d happily make tomorrow morning.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main types of painting styles?

On one spectrum, from most representational to least: realism and photorealism, expressive realism, impressionism, interpretive and transitional styles, whimsical and conceptual pieces, stylized painting, abstract realism, abstract representational painting, and pure abstraction. Most working artists sit at one stop or blend two neighbors.

What is the difference between a painting style and a painting technique?

A technique is how the paint goes down: glazing, scumbling, palette knife, alla prima. A style is how far the finished painting sits from its source and how much of the artist's interpretation is in it. You can paint impressionism with a knife or a brush, so the technique doesn't decide the style.

How do I find my own painting style?

Ask which style you'd enjoy painting for hours, since liking a style says little about whether you can make it. Look at each stop on the spectrum, put yourself in the chair with the brush in your hand, and ask whether you could make those marks with your own temperament. The style you can happily make is yours; the one you admire on someone else's wall usually isn't.

Can you mix painting styles?

Yes, and most of the strongest contemporary styles are blends. Abstract realism marries abstraction with realism, and you can marry impressionism with expressionism, or let a figure start realistic and dissolve into stylization. Nobody has to belong to a movement anymore to be shown, so the whole spectrum is open.

Is cartoony or stylized painting a lesser style?

No. Stylization means changing proportion, color, or form on purpose, from a position of skill, and collectors love whimsical and stylized pieces. The old put-down you may have heard, that something looks cartoony, describes a choice, and a choice made well is a style.

Which painting style is easiest for beginners?

The one your temperament can sustain. Realism rewards patience and tiny brushes; expressive and abstract styles reward speed and decisiveness. A beginner who loves detail will find realism easier, and a beginner who hates sitting with a source for hours will find it miserable. Pick by how you like to move, then build the skill.