Within the last decade or so, Instagram has become the primary home for most contemporary art. It has become so commonplace for artists to migrate to the platform that Instagram art has emerged as its own genre. Instagram art can bring you fame, acclaim, and, most importantly, it can lead to surprising career opportunities.
However, in an increasingly competitive online environment, it can be hard to get started. It can be tricky to find your footing in the confusing world of hashtags and filters, especially if you began your career as a traditional artist. If you want to learn how to improve your Instagram art in just 24 hours, keep on reading.
What Is Instagram Art?
Instagram Art is a new, trendy art style, usually seen on social media platforms like Instagram. The genre encompasses a whole range of different styles like digital art, acrylic paintings, pencil sketches, cartoons, caricatures, oil paintings, and much more!
The unifying aspect of Instagram art is that most people are trying to make it big on the website. Artists deploy everything in their arsenal in order to beat the algorithm and rise to fame. This involves improving the quality of the artwork and understanding how to optimize Instagram posts themselves.
How To Improve Your Instagram Art:
As we established, you can improve your Instagram art in two main ways: improving optimization and improving the art itself. It is always important to perfect your craft before you go searching for fame and success. After all, it does not matter how algorithmically perfect your posts are if the content is underwhelming. Not to mention, does any artist want to achieve success if they are not proud of their work?
That being said, here are four simple ways to improve your Instagram art.
1. Develop Your Style
It is the goal of every artist to distinguish themselves amongst the ocean of art being uploaded to the internet every single day. Artists want to be recognizable, distinct, and unique. The best way for you to separate your art from the masses is to develop an individual style.
To develop your own style, you need to make sure that you are creating what you like and not what you think other people want to see. Originality is the key to developing a personal style, and you cannot be original if you are trying to imitate other successful artists. When it comes to developing a style, you have to take risks!
2. Practice Daily
Practice really does make perfect! There is no better way to improve your art than by practicing daily. Force yourself to draw something every day, even if it is as simple as a sketch, an outline, or even just a few lines! Get yourself into the habit of practicing daily, and your art is bound to improve.
3. Vary Your Mediums
Have you ever been drained of ideas? Have you ever had hundreds of works in progress, and nothing completed? Every artist under the sun has complained about a creative block at least once in their lives! A lack of ideas is completely normal, but there are a few ways to lift yourself out of your creative rut.
One of the most effective ways to get your creative juices flowing is to vary your mediums. Use as many types of materials and methods to give your mind a new challenge. Try oil paints on watercolor paper, redraw one of your paintings digitally, or detail your acrylic paintings with pastels. Mix and match your artistic arsenal to improve your Instagram art.
4. Use a Reference
No artist is above using a reference. It does not matter whether you are a novice artist or Michelangelo himself; using a reference photo is imperative to creating high-quality artwork.
You need to use a reference to understand shape, form, color, lighting, movement, and much more! Reality is often very different from the image we have in our heads, and so it cannot hurt to use a reference image to try to improve your art.
How to Make Your Instagram Art Popular:
Once you have begun to improve your art quality, you can start to think about how to make your Instagram posts more popular. Let us look at five easy ways to make your Instagram art go viral.
1. Hashtag
The hashtag has earned a bad reputation over the years. The slurry of people using mountains of hashtags has given the once innocuous symbol a new meaning. The hashtag has unfairly been labeled as a symbol of vapid, clout chasing, and desperate Instagramers.
However, the hashtag is an important tool to get ahead of the Instagram algorithm. A hashtag tells the software of Instagram what your postโs content is and what it is related to. This allows the social media platform to show your post to people with related interests, thus increasing your postโs engagement rate. The more people who get to see your post, the more likely your Instagram art will go viral.
Of course, some people can go overboard with hashtags (some even use up to 30 hashtags!). Try to use just 10 to 15 hashtags that are related to your post to improve your Instagram art.
2. Timing
When you post, your art can be just as important as when you post it. If you do not post at the right time, your post can get lost in the cavernous void of the Instagram explore page!
Usually, the best times to post are from 11 am to 1 pm, when most people are on their lunch break, and 7 pm to 9 pm when most people return from their evening commute. Basically, it is more effective to post when Instagram is most active, and the chances of your post being seen are highest.
3. Challenges
Participating in Instagram art challenges can be a fun and simple way to increase your websiteโs popularity. One of the best art challenges going around on social media today is the โdraw this in your styleโ challenge.
The challenge begins by someone with posting their artwork and captioning it with the hashtag โdraw this in your style.โ Then, several artists will recreate the artwork in their own personal aesthetics, and they will tag the original artist in their caption.
What this does is that it creates cross-promotion between artists. In a nutshell, the original posterโs followers and the challenger discover the other artistโs work through the tags.
This usually leads to fans of one artist following the other, thus creating mutual profit for both creators. Whether you start your own challenge or follow someone elseโs, Instagram challenges can be a great way to increase your popularity.
4. Use a Watermark
The rise of Instagram art has, unfortunately, led to the theft of art by โrepostโ accounts. To combat this art theft, you should create a watermark to add to all of your artwork before posting it online. A watermark ensures that even if your work is stolen, viewers will be able to identify who created the work and can go and support the original artist.
A good watermark should be easy to read, it should mention your Instagram username and handle, and it should have just a dash of artistic flair so that it compliments your artwork. Make sure you create your watermark on a transparent layer so that you can superimpose it onto all of your artwork.
5. Use a Dedicated Art Account
Many new Instagram artists make the mistake of uploading their art to their personal Instagram account. This is a bad idea because it makes other users think that you are just a hobbyist and not a dedicated artist. It can also deter potential fans of your artwork if they go to your page and see a feed full of personal photos that have nothing to do with art.
Rather than interspersing your art with personal photos, try using a dedicated art account. Firstly, this allows you to keep your personal and private life separate.
Secondly, you can use a public Instagram account for all the benefits of global engagement without fear of identity theft. You can even set up your art account as a professional account so that brands and media outlets can contact you with career opportunities.
The 24-Hour Method
After reading how to improve your Instagram art, you may be thinking that becoming successful in the Instagram art community is a long and arduous process. This is not strictly true, however. There is a way to improve your Instagram art in just 24 hours!
1. Set Up Your Account
Start your 24-hour method by setting up a professional Instagram account for your art. Contrary to popular belief, this should only take a few minutes at most. Make sure you add your business email address and the link to your website (if you have one).
2. Create a Watermark
The next step in our 24-hour method is to create a watermark. This can be as simple or as complex as you want. Just be sure to keep your username and handle visible.
However, do not spend too much time on the watermark because you have to run on a tight schedule if you want to improve your art in just 24 hours!
3. Upload Your Old Art
To become a popular artist, you need to present your work! Since we only have 24 hours, go ahead and upload your old work to this new account. If you are photographing a physical work of art, you should probably digitally enhance the photograph.
Cameras can rarely capture the beauty of the real world, and so it is perfectly acceptable to retouch your photos. Increase the contrast, adjust the brightness, and saturate the colors to maximize your chances of success on Instagram.
4. Participate in Challenges
After you have uploaded your older artworks to your art account, you should get started on a trendy Instagram challenge. You should find a challenge that was started by (or prompted by) a medium-sized account.
You do not want to pick someone that is so popular that they will never respond to your post, nor do you want to pick an account so small that their comments will not benefit you in any way. A medium-sized account is the perfect one to choose from. Be sure to post the art at the optimal times that is, lunchtime and evenings.
5. Use Tags
Lastly, do not forget to load up your posts with hashtags. Use a dozen or so hashtags that are directly related to and highly focused on your art. Do not use obscure, long, or unpopular hashtags because that defeats the purpose of using a hashtag in the first place. A hashtag is the perfect final step in your 24-hour journey to better Instagram art.
Improving Instagram Art- What Have We Learnt?
As we can see, Instagram art is just as complex of a craft as any other. To improve the quality of your art, you have to work on your skills every day. There is no such thing as perfect when it comes to art, but the quality of the work can always be improved somehow. You should never stop trying to better your art skills.
Improving your artโs popularity is much easier and only takes a few clever adjustments to optimize your postsโ engagement rates. Something as simple as a hashtag or what time you post can take your art from good to excellent in just a few minutes. Optimizing your art is so easy that you can get a popular art blog on Instagram in just 24 hours!
While both the long and short-term methods have their own merits, combining both these strategies is the best way to go. Use the 24-hour method to get started on Instagram (setting up an account, getting some initial followers, and generally finding your footing).
Then, use the tips and tricks mentioned above to optimize your posts every time you upload your art to the social media platform. While you are doing this, continue to improve the quality of your art behind the scenes using the four techniques listed in this article.
Improving your Instagram art is a fun, fast, and free way of honing your talents and become a better artist overall.
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Last Updated on by Himani Rawat
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