Never make art for social media

Never make art for social media

This is not a joke.

You want to make art for fun? Don’t make art for social media.
You want to work in the industry and have your art published? Don’t make art for social media.
You want to be famous on social media? Don’t make art for social media.

Let me explain.

My thesis is that art is hard enough, and making art for social media, just to post, will just lead you to keep running on a treadmill and going nowhere. You might get some attention, but it will be an uphill battle to reach either personal satisfaction or even your career goals.

My thesis is that true satisfaction (and attention) comes from both building great things, and authentically contributing to people’s lives. And it is impossible to do this when the art is limited to an ephemeral post.

This concept first came to my attention while listening to the 3 Point Perspective Podcast (hosted by Jake Parker, Lee White, and, at the time, Will Terry). They once discussed a concept that profoundly impacted me:

An artwork should have at least 3 lives.

Once an illustration is done, it can be either sold as a print, be part of a collection you licence, displayed at an event like an exhibition, be used on products such as t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, or be adapted digitally into a wallpaper or coloring page. It can also be part of a larger project, such as a children’s book, a board game, an album cover. And finally, yes, it can also be a post on social media.

The number “3” is not a hard rule, but it’s there to open your mind to more ways to use your art and share it with more people.

I don’t like Inktober. Or rather, I don’t think you should do it in its classic form:

Because not only is the event very ephemeral (who’s looking at Inktober entries a week after they are posted, let alone the next year?), but by default you don’t build towards anything: once it’s over, most artists just leave their 31 drawings in a drawer and never make anything from it.

But what you can do instead is to use the challenge as a means to create something bigger.

Here are some ways I’ve used the challenge in the past:

• I made more than 100 stickers on 17 themes that I then used for gifts (making small drawings instead of a big illustration is easier!)
• I made characters that were made to be used as assets for visual novels (this one I didn’t complete, haha)
• And finally this year, I drew 31 locations from my fictional city along with a description for each one. And I’m currently making a zine out of them!

Those are only the examples I actually did, but there are many more things you can do. Simply compile your drawings in a book, for example!

My point is clear: if you do anything more than just posting your image on social media, you’re allowing your work to shine brighter, reach more people, and escape the need to always create more just to get attention.

Now, if you still want to post more on social media but without burning yourself out, you might want to check out my post “How to post more without making more art”.

I hope this will be useful to someone. Please take care and make cool art!