As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time online, I will freely admit to following plenty of social media managers and gurus. And if there’s one piece of advice that is often repeated ad nauseam, it’s being consistent. Which, admittedly, is a phrase that is very vague and easy to say, similar to how self-help gurus often peddle the advice “just be productive” or experienced artists who turn around and say to their less experienced counterparts, “Just draw every day.”1
Needless to say, I was not very consistent with posting art online.
Consistency has always been something of a challenge to me. When I was younger, I eschewed consistency with the force of a thousand suns. I’m a creative! I told myself. I was doing it for the art! I didn’t want to get bogged down by silly little things like limitations and rules. I wanted novelty!2 This meant there were some days when I was fueled by an artistic frenzy and frantically pumped out multiple works at a time. Which was great… until I inevitably crashed from the high and burnt out, resulting in a break ranging from a few months to even years. I lost the motivation to draw and then felt guilty for losing the motivation to draw. By the time I was well enough to begin again, I had forgotten everything I had learnt and had to start from the basics. Rinse and repeat.3
Unsurprisingly, this cycle made it really difficult to build up any kind of following, no matter which platform I was on. Which of course, meant my art was not being seen by a lot of people, and my follower count stagnated.4 And yes, I know this sounds incredibly vain and narcissistic (#firstworldproblems), and I know I shouldn’t care about vanity metrics, but don’t all artists want people to at least acknowledge or even better yet — validate our art? I know I do.
After once again burning out and taking a break (in the middle of Alphabet Superset, no less) from February to June of this year, I told myself I was going to improve on creating and posting art more consistently. I laid out some ground rules: first, I was to be posting on Instagram at least 3-5 times a week, regardless of whatever I created, and second, posting to stories at least once a day.
This was when I ran into my first major problem — what was I to create? This is something I’ve found most creatives struggle with — inspiration. As Sheri Conaway writes,
“Inspiration is a contrary beast at best. Sometimes it drives you into a frenzy, flinging ideas hard and fast, while others, it’s elusive.”
(In fact, I’m struggling with inspiration right now as I hammer away at my keyboard, typing this very post into existence while fighting my perfectionism).
Now, an easy way to bypass this problem is to participate in art challenges — which I’m planning to do more of. And there’s a plethora of them — from Alphabet Superset to Draw This In Your Style (DTYIS), to everything going on in October (Inktober, Drawtober… to be fair, there’s a lot5). Most art challenges will outright tell you the prompt, theme, and even medium of what you’re supposed to create, so that’s already half the battle. Art challenges even have the added benefit of forcing participants to create art in a series or a theme, making each artwork more coherent. As Struthless, the creator and host of the Alphabet Superset art challenge states,
“Everything you make is amplified by everything else you make. The power of a focused body of work.”
When it comes to art challenges, I’ve learned that planning goes a long way. And this is coming from someone who hates planning in general. But to succeed in an art challenge, you must, at the very least, lay down what you are going to create, how you are going to create it, and any constraints if necessary. Thumbnailing is key here. You can make it as messy as you want because no one’s going to see it! Some art challenges have more restrictions, while others require you to set the boundaries instead. This is to eliminate decision fatigue — when you’re in the middle of a challenge, the last thing you want to do is to come up blank.
I won’t lie and say I have everything figured out. A month ago, I thought I was nailing this whole consistency thing pretty well. It was during this time a trend of letting ChatGPT roast your Instagram feed started circling around. I tried it out, just to see what the whole deal was. And boy, did ChatGPT deliver:
“Your IG feed feels like an art school project hat got lost in a maze of existential musings and doodles. It’s a bit of a chaotic mix, with dark, moody aesthetics fighting for attention against some slightly awkward drawings and text-heavy posts that scream “I have thoughts!” but don’t quite land. The random YouTube recommendations and scattered zine check-ins make it look more like a brainstorming board than a cohesive creative space. It’s like you’re trying to be deep and introspective, but instead, it’s just giving off “I might need a nap” vibes. Time to find a theme and maybe lighten up those shadows a bit!”6
My first reaction was to laugh it all off. To play it off as a joke. But a part of it did hit me because I knew… ChatGPT had a point.
I mean, you only need to take a brief scroll through my Instagram profile to see exactly what I mean. To put it gently, it’s very eclectic. Aside from my fully rendered art pieces, I was (am) also posting:
Stylised illustrations that had lineart and cell-shading
Zines — both digital and analogue
Posts from my Substack
Collages — both digital and analogue
This has the effect of making my feed look, to best put it, cluttered. I am currently toying with the idea of creating another new Instagram account specifically for my side hobbies, writings and designs, but this would make my posting schedule even more difficult to implement. Art takes time, and you can’t rush art.7 All in all, I think I’ve currently got enough on my plate — especially with how social media has become more and more confusing over the years. So I’ll be sticking to the same Instagram account for now, and hopefully, I’ll be able to grow my audience steadily.8
So, here’s to surviving on social media! Let me know what you guys think about consistency and growing online.
🎨 Artist Recap
Below is my art for the Drawtober prompt: Undead. If you couldn’t recognise her, it’s Emily from Corpse Bride — one of my favourite shows when I was a kid. It was my first taste in stop-motion animation (and I would go on to love Coraline) and the film had absolutely banger songs. Remains of the Day? Don’t even get me started.
For a story that touches upon death, it’s surprisingly wholesome, if bittersweet. And it’s something else to watch during the spooky season if you’re not into jump scares.
Come check my Instagram and Twitter for more updates! And if you want to support me and all my endeavours, consider buying from my shop or donating to my Ko-fi as well!
In case you don’t know, I hate this type of advice. Like, what does it even mean? Anyway, this is the first time I’m using footnotes — is this how it’s done?
And by novelty, I mean getting my grubby little hands in anything, throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, and losing interest in the new *thing* just as quickly. You have no idea how many digital brushes I downloaded only to use them once and completely forget about them. Anyhow, I digress.
There was a lot of rinsing and repeating.
This is funny as I work in digital marketing, and by all accounts, I should know better.
October is like, the month of art challenges. I have no idea why this is. Did you know there’s also a Zinetober? Or a Slowtober? I didn’t. The more you know I guess.
Ouch. Like, this hurts. I mean, I know I asked for it, but still.
I mean you can, technically, but it wouldn’t look good, methinks.
Unless Zuckerberg somehow screws it up, but considering what’s going on with Twitter/X, I’m not too optimistic.