Daily sketches

Good or bad? It is the balance. Sometimes you need to get into painting mode and sketching warms you up. Sometimes you need to finish that piece from yesterday and sketching is just a procastination. 

I have lots of unfinished pics because the energy goes into the outputting ideas process, and nothing remains for the phase where i would go into details and finish it off. I feel always like not gaving tome to go deeper into work. I am jumping around between my parttime jobs. 

The challenge with colours is a nice one, and it inspires me. The challenges with sketches tires me out. 

Hastags on Instagram - an exercise

I posted the advert image for the MAEZA magazine and prepared a lot of hashtags, and mentioned the artists from one of our articles. Hastaging and connecting to other people is one of the advices given by Sue Zimmerman, the instagram expert, and Ashely Aiko keeps telling me. I didn't really believe it, until I found that within half'n hour I had 15 likes, and growing, for this one advert image. It is not just the largest number so far, it is was incredibly fast! It is the hashtags! A fellow arist Johanna Fritz followed Sue's advise earlier when she started her new community and business Fritzi.Flock. She reach over 1k followers within one month. That sound brilliant!

About the hashtags - people with similar interest will more likely find your art when searching for new pictures and inspiration or people to follow. Instagram has a sort of newsfeed that is individualised to your interesstes. E.g. with #ink I got some tatooarts to see me, with #pencil I got people making portraits in pencil. With #illustration I got some companies, which is super important. And so on... it totally really depends on the community connected to a hashtag and I will research more on this to find the right # for the right audience.

About the linking artist via @ - With the magazine I feel more comfortable approach artists, because I have something to talk about. Linking the artist when writing an article about them makes totally sence for me and I want to keep doing this. I also like to link artist when they inspired me. This is a personal connection :-) and I will do a bit more of this. No more being shy! (Thank you Ashley for the advice <3 )

A conclusion on loosing likes on my FB and Instagram

I first build up a group of followers on facebook. I posted every two weeks and tried to show my best work. They liked it and were ready to klick on like for each one. 

Then i started Instagram, where i wanted to cultivate a constant output. But i was swept away by the amount of post from other people... So I posted anything, even unfinished sketches, just bcs all the other artist are posting sketches. But they had their propper art out there and people wanted to see the " before" art. 

It was pressure and feeling sorry for my facebook account, that i then started sending instagram updates to the facebook account. I thought, i should have consistent output on each platform, each platform should have the same pictures, so every follower is equal to each other. 

Well that backfired... These medias behave different which also depends on the type of followers you acquired in the first place. It depends on how YOU want to use the platforms. 

 I analyse

With my FB account, I started to show my friends what i do and wanted to get me used to interact with public. There were finished pictures and the people cared to read my little story around it. When the sketches started, they did not react. I can assume that either it is not wowing them, that it might be too often, or that they are simply waiting for the finished piece to come, but i did not do my job of delivering the finished picture.

 I wanted my instagrm account to be a stream of daily life as illustrator.  ideas. It should be a collection where i can look back each week and find out how much i did. This idea never got through... I never looked back, and was only counting the likes... I started sharing on facebook and thought the likes would fly to me. 

Facit: define how you want to use your account and stick to it. Make changes, if required and communicate it to your crowd. Very important: they don't have to like your stuff and it is courtesy and respect that you show for your readers by communicating with them. 

My Facit: first work then public. Always make sure you keep your high quality!

P.s. Looking how other, established arist do it, i found some ofthem  post exactely the same picture on aaaaall platforms. I didnt think about it deeper and followed their example. But they posted finished work, or pretty things, and moreover were consistent in quality, as well as consistent in the use of the platforms. I changed what i post, why i post and where i post.