So i haven't really drawn anything since forever. Nothing worth while anyway, and when i doodle i usually end up disliking it, because i lack creativity to want to put something down on paper in the first place, resulting in the subject of my drawing coming forth from the question: What would i want to draw?

The immediate answer, the answer that always pops up in my mind first but always in the background, like a faint little voice, is always: 'Nothing. Why bother? What would be the goal of it?' Which is usually relatively quickly follow by a much louder 'Whatever i desire, i s'ose' (Which usually means i end up drawing female bodies, without any background or sensibility). That background voice saying 'why the hell bother?' is always there though, and it has managed to take me over. A good while back now.

But then, maybe 10 minutes ago, while i was clearing out my deviation inbox for the umpteenth time (267 or so deviations) i came across something. Well, not really. I was rampaging through the deviations deleting them as soon as i caught a glimpse of the thumbnail representing the artwork, and i had deleted this one piece too before the glimpse had even really sunk in (It was a sideways looking face, with some red motive in front of it. Really simple piece, but beautiful in its own character. I've done a similar piece). When it did sink in though, the glimpse of that image, something that's been eluding me for very long finally struck me.

The purpose of art is beauty, and thereby entertainment.
The reason to create art is to entertain others with the beauty you create, and therefrom derive fulfillment.

This is the basic concept of art, but art started for me as a sham, as a desire to be like others, and my motivation was based on that, on jealousy and a desire to imitate.

And in that light, i think it's not too far fetched to reason ones art style is affected by it, by the artists basic motivations, meaning we as onlookers, can derive whether an artist started out of the basic interest of beauty, or jealousy.

I think i can say that when an artist has a widely used style of art, the motivational tool will(would have) be(en) the desire to imitate, to be like...
And on that same train of thought people that have a completely unique artstyle do what they do for themselves, and the next coupe of that train would be that because they do it for themselves, their art tends to be more beautiful, because that is their alpha and omega so to speak, where as the imitator stops when they think they've achieved their goal of imitation. (The imitation will in my opinion never be as beautiful as the original, because of difference in motivation.)

There will be a grey area, where an artist has a not-completely unique art style for instance, or where an artist with an original art style only uses his art to make art that has been made a thousand times before, or where an artist with a widely used art style does something completely unique with it (and thereby often evolving the art style, i think).