Hard to Believe How This Art Turns Out Messy to Polished

The Upsides of Social Media

If you're annihilation similar me, y'all probably have a dear/hate relationship with social media. It can be an astonishing tool with huge benefits, specifically for artists like us. I use Instagram the virtually, and it's helped me in numerous ways:

• Improved Productivity: I draw something every day and mail service it on Instagram.
• Accountability: I'1000 more likely to post a drawing each day (and thereforemake a drawing every 24-hour interval ) knowing that I've committed to it publicly on Instagram.
• New Connections: I've met amazing artists from around the globe through Instagram.
• Inspiration: I see inspiring work created past other artists on Instagram, and it gives me ideas, influences me, and drives me to brand more fine art.

Overall, I recall we're lucky to have this method of connecting with other artists around the world. Imagine how tiny our artistic world would be without information technology! Just the benefits of social media can quickly dissolve and gave fashion to the darker side of social media.

The Downsides of Social Media

Instagram—and any other platform—can become a harmful, stressful, and stifling infinite for artists with detrimental furnishings to our art. As much as Instagram has helped me, it'southward also hurt me:

• Decreased Productivity: I keep to Instagram to browse "just for a minute", and suddenly an 60 minutes has gone by and I'yard still staring downwardly at my telephone instead of drawing.

• Pressure level to Perform: Knowing I should postal service my work adds actress pressure to not only the human action of cartoon, simply likewise in what I choose to draw, and I tin autumn into the trap of wanting external validation.

• New Comparisons: Seeing and so many new and amazing artists can frequently morph into the comparing game, leading me to believe my piece of work isn't good enough.
• Bad Intentions: I can draw something in my private sketchbook for the honey of it, merely if I draw something with the sole intention of posting it, the art tin suffer. I begin creating work for others, instead of for myself.

Take information technology from young man Might Could Studiomate and super-inspiring artist, Linda:

"It could be just me… Instagram is a great place for inspiration and connecting with similar minds but if you are not careful information technology tin be highly addictive and derail y'all from why we're here in the first place. I'one thousand glad I've constitute IG (sort of) and can say with certainty I've fallen in those pitfalls… but I now consciously know that merely fifty-fifty that still takes energy that could all used elsewhere."

It'southward not just Linda. And it'south not just y'all or me. It'southward all of us. We all struggle with how to play the game of social media and non lose our minds—and our art.

The Game of Social Media

We get so caught upwardly in the game of social media, we outset believing nosotros have to play by the rules given to united states. Instagram is built to hold your attention for equally long every bit possible and take hold of your eyeballs as oft every bit possible. They want you coming dorsum again and again, for longer and longer. They tell you in order to win this game, y'all just accept to mail more, go more likes, and get more followers. The more you lot sign in, the more than you post, the more you become, and the more yous win.

More, more, more than.

Simply I'one thousand not here to tell you to delete all your accounts, give up social media completely, and start protesting the tech world. Social media can be beneficial to us artists, remember? I nonetheless want all those upsides!

The challenge is to keep the upsides, but get rid of the downsides. We can cease letting social media lure us in and rule the game, and instead we tin can take charge. We can be in control. We can brand our ain rules.

So I'd like to share my social media philosophy with you. It's not perfect, and I definitely however slip-up from fourth dimension to time, only hopefully information technology tin can assist you lot begin to take back control of your social media tools. Because remember, these are tools that we use—we don't have to permit them utilize us.

Make Art for Yous, Non for Likes

Social media and I are already at odds on i major front: Social media does non like mistakes and imperfections. And I love mistakes and imperfections. Social media likes squeaky-make clean-polished work, gallery-set up art, and magazine-photoshoot-gear up desk shots. I similar wandering process work, quick doodles, and my desk is always a mess.

So what practice we do? Practise we modify our piece of work to cater to the stranger-filled-mass of Instagram? Practice nosotros erase all the stray marks, make clean upwards our desk, and obsess over photograph editing every fourth dimension nosotros post a drawing? Do nosotros change who we are to win the social media game?

We tin and so hands get caught up in the pursuit of pleasing others, and social media amplifies that tendency. Nosotros begin to see trends in what people like, and we begin to create for that random, ambiguous grouping of people, when we demand to be creating just for ane person: ourself.

"Never play to the gallery. Never work for other people in what you do. Always think that the reason you initially started working was there was something inside yourself that, if yous could manifest information technology, y'all felt you lot would empathize more near yourself. I think it's terribly dangerous for an creative person to fulfill other people'due south expectations." –David Bowie, musician

If yous brownnose your art to getting likes, you'll probably find them. (Hot tip for the ladies: testify some cleavage and I guarantee yous'll get 500 likes instantly—it's piece of cake! **puh-lease hear my voice dripping with sarcasm** ) If you lot cater to trends and popularity, you'll get the likes you wanted, just yous'll also end upwardly with art that doesn't feel like you. Yous'll feel empty and unfulfilled in your work, and your art will reflect that.

Alternatively, if you create the art you want, and you similar, and that feels most like yous , you may or may not get 500 likes. Merely which is more important in the long run? Finding your vocalism and making art you're truly proud of? Or finding a horde of fifteen,000 strangers who intendance about work you don't care about?

Peradventure you're thinking now: 'well that's like shooting fish in a barrel for Christine to say, she has nearly ii,000 followers and regularly gets 100 likes on her work.' Simply to me honest, that'due south all new to me only within the last 6 months. I sabbatum at ~200 followers for years, and I honestly don't actually know what happened lately to change that. I've been posting my work regularly on Instagram since 2013 and it'south taken this long to become more than than 2-3 likes on a postal service—including my mom.

Let me tell it to you straight: likes don't thing. I know it feels and then much like they do, but trust me, having a bunch of likes won't make yous feel any better nearly your work.Your goal of what is an acceptable amount of likes volition just proceed climbing higher and higher the more you lot get—it's a constantly moving, unachievable goal.

Yous retrieve you'll be satisfied and validated when you lot become fifty likes a post. And then you lot decide it's 100. Then 500. And so you lot come across that artist over at that place gets 2,000 likes on every cartoon! Why can't I go 2,000 likes on my drawings?! It never ends.

"A goal is something that goes away when you hit it. Once you've reached information technology, it's gone. You could always fix another i, merely I only don't office in steps like that… I approach things continuously, not in stops. I simply want to keep going — whatever happens along the way is but what happens." Jason Fried, author + CEO of Rework

And guess what—information technology makes no sense what people similar, and it's close to impossible to anticipate! (Besides, cleavage and puppies. Those are solid bets.) Sometimes I'll spend 2 hours on a drawing, think it's amazing, post information technology, and… crickets. It gets 15 likes. Other times, I'll spend literally 2 seconds on a drawing, remember it's terrible, post it, and… out come the cheers and hooplas and 100 likes! What gives?! That thing was terrible!

People's opinions are weird and unpredictable. In that location'due south no sense or reason to cater your art to what you think other people like. Y'all'll unremarkably be wrong, and if you happen to be right—cough, cleavage—it'll pb you down an even worse path of inauthenticity and deep confusion in your art.

We tin can't control what other people think of our piece of work or how often they like information technology on social media. We can only control how much effort, time, and thought we put into making our fine art. We can but control how much of ourselves nosotros put into our art. We tin but keep exploring, keep cartoon, and keep sharing.

Practice what you have to do to make social media piece of work for yous. Observe other outlets for sharing your piece of work if you take to. I only want you to make more art. And I want you to share your fine art, because I want to see it.

When y'all make fine art you dearest, art that makes you happy to create, other people will encounter that, and they'll like it. And I mean they'll actually similar it, not but tap an empty center icon on a screen.

You take to make art for you, non for likes. You have to make the art that speaks to you. You have to make the art you like.

And that's the just similar that matters.

clarkarpher.blogspot.com

Source: https://might-could.com/essays/social-media-for-artists-make-art-for-you-not-likes/

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