Illustration by Casey Webb
Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for visual artists and, thanks to hashtags, it’s also one of the easiest for new followers to find you. Not only should you have an Instagram account if you’re an artist, but you should also use your account wisely. The smarter and more efficient your social strategy is, the sooner you and your work can become popular. Start sooner rather than later and build up great habits.
Posting your work
Uploading your work
Instead of taking dark, low quality pictures of your work to upload, try sending high quality images to your email and saving the images to your phone for easy upload straight to Instagram. If you must use the camera on your phone to photograph your work then be sure to take the pictures in natural lighting for best results.
Captioning your work
Tell us a story- let us know what inspired you, or give us an idea on how it was made.
Being professional
When it comes to posting on Instagram or any other social media platform, be sure to check out this article on what artists should and shouldn’t post.
Getting Followers
Hashtag your work
Hashtags can be a great way to gain followers. The trick is to use popular hashtags that people actually search for. You can either paste them straight into the caption of the picture, or post them in the comment section once your picture has been posted. Either way, your picture will still show up in the search results for said hashtag. Just be sure not to list any more than the limit of 30 hashtags per picture.
To make hashtagging your pictures quicker, compile a list of the hashtags most relevant to your work from the list below, and save them to the notes section of your phone for easy access to copy and paste.
Popular Hashtags for Art and Photography
#art #artist #artsy #painting #illustration #drawing #draw #sketch #sketchbook #paper #pen #pencil #gallery #masterpiece #creative #graphic #graphics #artoftheday #instaart #instaartist #wip #artistsoninstagram #abstract #abstractart
#photography #photographer #photo #photos #pic #pics #picture #pictures #snapshot #picoftheday #photooftheday #exposure #composition #focus #capture #moment
Connecting with others
Sometimes it’s easier to find people than it is to have them find you. Search some of the above hashtags that are of interest to you and like some of the pictures you find to connect with other artists.
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Hello Casey!
Would you please give me tips on how to maintain followers? Since many of the folowers only want followback. And I don’t want to followback them sometimes.
Thanks!
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Hey Mega,
Followers aren’t really worth keeping unless they follow you for the right reasons: they’re genuinely interested in your work. Otherwise, it’s just a number. Not all followers are created equally, 1 follower who is a true fan is better than 100 followers who don’t even care about what you post. I hope this helped.
-Casey
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Hi Casey,
I uploaded one of my illustrations onto Instagram by attaching it to an e-mail and saving it on my iPhone6s. The image looks great on my phone, but when I view it on my computer the lines aren’t as crisp (it’s a pen and ink illustration). I saved it as a large file jpg in Photoshop of course, to get the best quality.
What am I doing wrong?
Regards
Nathan
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Hey Nathan,
I asked our editor Joey about your question and he said, “Condense the images as small as they can in like photoshop. But that’s just how Instagram is. Its made for like 72dp like your phone camera. I have a really hard time with color pics too.”
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Casey
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Hi Casey,
Thanks for the advice. Have you heard about the Adobe package Lightroom? I’m wondering if using that would give me a better quality image before uploading to Instagram.
Regards
Nathan
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Hey Nathan, you could definitely try condensing the images in lightroom to see if it helps. We’re both more familiar with Photoshop Elements to be honest.
-Casey
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Thank you for the great information I never new about this site. Very cool.
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Hey Jeannie, thank you for your kind words. :)
Cheers,
Casey
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Very practical advice; never thought of keeping my tags as notes. Thanks Jung Katz!
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Thank YOU for reading, Alexa. :)
-Casey
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