Does your attempt to be 'different', 'unique', 'innovative', or 'unconventional' enhance or detract from your work? What is your work meant to be saying or doing?
Traditional methods and mediums are conducive to the effective communication through visual language. They became the instituted standard because of their usefulness.
In the 15th century in Europe, oil paint came to be the pre-eminent medium of visual artists and remained so for the better part of five centuries until superseded in utility by mechanical reproduction and film. Oil paint allowed for the creation of more vibrant, more life-like images, which had greater appeal to human sensibilities.
Painting reached its arguable peak with Academic Realism in the late 19th century. Here, centuries of progress in occidental art practice culminated in a system of education that produced many of the most proficient painters and effective visual communicators the world had ever seen. If you wish to communicate visually through a single or small number of still images, there is little reason to pursue an alternative medium.
'Alternative medicine' is not actually an alternative form of medicine. By definition, 'alternative medicine' is an alternative to medicine, because it has not been demonstrated to work. As soon as a medicine is proven to work, it is incorporated into the extant knowledge of working medicine and it is no longer an alternative to medicine, it is simply medicine.
Similarly, alternative art materials are really just an alternative to art materials. If it was a useful, practical, effective material it would not be 'alternative'. It would be packaged and sold by Winsor & Newton in both premium and student-grade forms. If you could actually make good, useful artwork from it, artists commonly would. If you want to create two-dimensional or three-dimensional visual art but don't want to communicate effectively, by all means, abandon traditional methods and mediums.
Ars est celare artem is a Latin phrase that is variously translated as 'it is art to conceal art', 'art is the concealment of artifice', 'the art is in the concealment of the artifice', etc. This is to say that the means by which the artwork is created and the fact that it is an artwork, should not be made apparent to the viewer, that it should be concealed from them. Not that the form or technique of the artwork must be suppressed, but that the execution should be such that it is the content that engages the viewer, that the painting, the passage, the scene, the drawing, is temporarily forgotten and the audience experiences instead what it depicts. The viewer is not looking at a painting of a dog, but at the dog the painting depicts, not a drawing of a tree, but the tree, not reading a passage that describes sadness, but feeling the sadness described, not hearing a song that conveys happiness, but feeling the happiness the song conveys. In order to achieve this, the technique used to create the artwork must seem effortless and must not be obtrusive. A painting that sort of looks a bit like a person can't be the person it depicts, it can only be a collection of obvious artifice. A song played out of time, with missed notes, sung with off key vocals, can't be what the song attempts to convey, it can only be a poor attempt at music. Do we make apologies for poorly played music saying that it's the concept that's important? A burnt chicken wing doused in baked beans can't be a caille en sarcophage, but do we make excuses for it and pay a haute cuisine price all the same?
How can the concept of an artwork be it's most important or only component, when the artwork doesn't even effectively express its concept?
Ars est celare artem is analogous to 'suspension of disbelief', a phrase commonly found in reference to storytelling, and is in the same way integral to the success of an artwork. Suspension of disbelief occurs when an artwork - whether it is literature, painting, film, etc. - convinces the viewers to temporarily ignore the fact that they are experiencing an artwork and engage directly with what the artwork is conveying.
The onus for the suspension of disbelief is on the creator of the artwork, not the audience. It is not the audience's responsibility to ignore poor acting, to excuse wobbly cardboard sets, continuity errors, glaring incongruities with reality, or to fill in gaping plot holes. Likewise, it is not the audience's responsibility to attempt to claw meaning out of or thrust meaning into an obtuse, sloppy, vague, unfocussed, abstract, conceptual, exceedingly subjective or otherwise poor artwork. It is the artist's job to provide the content, the skillful delivery of it, to attract and engage, to communicate, to put the necessary focus on the important components and intended message and diminish the elements that detract from it.
Anything your artwork does to remind the viewer that he or she is looking at an artwork - rather than viewing the subject and the feeling created by your treatment of it - detracts from it. If you cannot conceal your artifice, you cannot suspend the viewers' disbelief, you cannot engage the viewer directly, you will not communicate to the viewer an authentic experience.
Furthermore...
As an artist you are more often asked about your influences from other artists, than for your influences from reality, or what it is you have gained from studying the subject. And if you haven't gained a deep insight into the subject through intensive study of it, how could you possibly expect to make meaningful artwork about it? If all you know about a subject, an issue, an event, is what you've been told third-hand by mainstream media or the shallow cognisance of popular culture or what you've borrowed from another artist's work, you are effectively ignorant and so will be the work you produce.
Perhaps it is better to not be influenced by other artists, to not borrow from their work, to not attempt to emulate their oeuvre, but to be influenced by the subject, the concept, the personal exploration of what it is you are depicting. The less you look at other artist's work, the more personal and original your own interpretation of the subject is.
If you want to paint an apple, you need to look at apples, study them, and develop your own visual voice in expressing the nuances of apples, not borrow from other artist's treatments of that same fruit.
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