A Creature Considers Sharing Art Online

“Delete Twitter!” Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about the excitement of sharing your art online. I doubt that you’re unfamiliar with social media in general, but as an artist, is it the same?

“Don’t I just make an account and post it?”

Like most things, there’s some nuance. And if you’re an artist coming out of your shell to share for the first time online, it might seem scary! What happens if you do something wrong? What if no one even sees it?

Yes. Maybe it helps to learn a little, then. After all, if you poured a ton of time into your art, and it goes nowhere, it can feel really bad! But at the same time, it’s not healthy for your motivation to depend on that success, so what do you do? My name’s Kanjon, I talk about the struggles of being an artist and the tricks to defeat them: For this, we’ve got strategies, expectations, and even etiquette to work through.

The What

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Made some art? Want to share? Heck yeah. That’s the main thing we’ll talk about today. If you made it and want to share it, you can and should share it. We’ll get into that in just a moment.

Is it a study, where you drew something you saw, like a photo, or a re-draw of someone else’s art? This gets a little trickier. If you studied your own photos or environment, this doesn’t matter much. But someone else’s? This gets complicated. First: do you have permission? If it’s from an active artist, they might not be super excited to see their work copied, even if it ends up really different. Flip that around for yourself: if someone re-drew something you made, shared it, and their post got popular, you wouldn’t feel so great, right? Respect others’ feelings and preferences. Some obvious exceptions to this: public domain art, historical pieces where the artist is long-dead, or it’s something made for you to follow along with where permission was already granted – no one’s going to get upset at that.

Case in point, if you’ve been interested in learning digital art but are still working on your sketching skills, my Digital Dabbles series is a free short course on making this scene, and I give you the base sketch to start from! Check it out.

Then, be sure to credit properly. Ask the original artist if you’re unsure; usually a link to their piece and @at-tagging them works well.

That said, it’s rare to get a “yes” if you ask for permission: most artists don’t want their work copied like that, so keep it a private practice if so. Now, what if you asked another artist to make art for you? Yes, artists can commission each other; it’s actually quite popular and fun! Usually, an artist you commissioned is OK with you sharing and re-posting as long as you credit them, but if you’re ever unsure, ask! If they want to post it themselves, see if you can boost their post instead. Generally, even if you paid them for it, the artist is still the owner of that piece! It’s entirely within their right to say what can be done with it. All this applies to surprise gift art you receive too. It’s easy to ask “hey, can I post this online? what socials would you like me to tag?” A couple other points: unless the artist says it’s OK, don’t share the work-in-progress pictures they send, and if you make any edits to the final piece beyond cropping and resizing, check with them first.

Sharing pictures you AI-generated? Here’s how. You click and hold on that picture, drag it down to the Trash or the Recycle Bin icon. Then start building your sketching and drawing skills! Anyone can learn, all it takes to start is picking up that pencil. Check out the rest of this channel for tons more.

The Where and How

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Fine fine, you have your art, where do you post it? You’re probably thinking about a few different sites already, what makes them similar and what makes them different? You’ll find different sentiments among sites and communities, and in general places to post look like one of these three things:

Galleries

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Galleries are somewhat more unique to the art world compared to most social media. These are places like Art Station, Cara, Itaku, where the main focus is art. You’ll find ways to categorize and tag your art, places to comment and collect art you like, and usually a way to chat with others on the site. In my opinion, these are low-stress places to post, and you should have at least one gallery profile somewhere to catalog your art over time. You can link to this from other social sites, such as…

Infinite Scrollers

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Infinite scrollers… usually, people are thinking about these. You share art, people like it, boost it, repost it, reply to it, sometimes things get popular, sometimes they go nowhere, and usually there’s some kind of “algorithm” you have to fight if you want a post to really “blow up”. Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Twitter, even Instagram, which looks like a gallery but acts more like a doom-scroller – these are all in this category.

There’s a lot I want to say about managing your expectations when posting on these, but first I will go ahead and give you some strategic tips when working with them. First, assess the vibe. If you want to post a particular kind of art, search it on the site and see what people do. Do they use tags? Post in certain ways? There’s a feeling to a site that can be hard to discover until you’re really used to it. Do you have friends on that site already? Follow them, see what they’re up to, and they’ll likely be excited when they see you’re posting art and boost that too. Be polite; some folks love to see art but don’t re-post it and that’s OK. Does the site have an “algorithm” where a popular post gets shown to even more people? What makes that work? Mastodon typically does not, for example, and the key way to get your post seen is to have it directly shared by others and using tags.

Chats

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Lastly, don’t forget about chats! Even if they’re small group chats, sharing art with people you know, or even people that hang around there, can be really nice! You’ll often get some pretty quick reactions to your art, and if you’re found a chat, Telegram group, or Discord server with similar artists, you can usually learn from each other! This is also a great place to make other artist friends. Friends can be super important in keeping up your motivation, especially when we start to think about managing your expectations on other social sites.

Great Expectations

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Still, there’s something really fun about seeing an art piece do well online. Sometimes things get boosted way beyond expectations, but other times they fall flat. That might make you think that you’re failing as an artist, when in reality, these sites are showing you popular art! You don’t see the un-popular art if you’re not looking for it! I think we’d be in a better place without these popularity algorithms, but I’m not going to tell you to flat-out avoid these sites, I know that’s where a lot of people are. What’s the key? Choosing better priorities.

Don’t draw to be popular. Don’t “build an audience”. Don’t draw fanart because that’s getting the likes today. Don’t make yourself draw what you think other people want because you’ll feel even worse when it doesn’t actually work. These sites push us into thinking that popularity is what we should aim for, but outside of dumb luck, a lot of great artists don’t get great responses! You’ll see artists “joke” about how their shitposts go to the moon and back, and their hundred-hour piece went nowhere – and that’s not even really a joke, it’s what really happens! How your art does is more often tied to circumstance, not how well you did. It’s how well the art worked in the context of the website, your existing popularity, how the algorithm’s mood is at any given moment. Some of my worst-produced videos are still the most popular! It’s a circumstance.

Here’s what you aim for. Post on galleries, social scrollers, and chats, but your goal is to avoid the numbers, and instead make friends. Stay with me, I’m not trying to be all feel-goody. When you meet people in any of these places, see what they’re up to. Maybe they make art too! You can probably learn from them and help them feel valued in their work. It feels harder to do than posting and hoping for likes, but if you build up long-lasting friendships, you’ll get feedback that feels way more valuable, can pick up new interests and skills, and of course: have cool people to talk to! Down the line you can all support each other on these big social sites and hey, someday you can make some popular posts too. Another way to look at it is a matter of size: the smaller the community or chat, the more valuable it can be. Those personal connections are much easier to build in smaller groups, and the feedback you give each other that much more meaningful. Friends and connections are important long-term, for your growth, skills, health, and even commissions – if that’s your route. The people that often want art from an artist are those that feel a connection, and that’s rare to find when someone scrolls by your post on a big feed, no matter how popular it is.

If you’re paying attention closely, you’ll note that this is only a matter of perspective. You’re still posting in the same places, but you’ve given yourself other goals. You’re allowing yourself the freedom to have some fun on all of these social platforms, but you’ve made your main target something you can be happy about. That’s really what’s important in art: if you’re not happy, even with those big social numbers, you won’t want to keep making it. You will make posts that fall flat. If you have better things to focus on, it will sting less, and with practice, won’t matter. Lean into your motivation and help it grow with friends. Chase that passion artist, I’ll see you next time.