After doing fanart, I no longer feel it’s worth posting personal work on social media

I posted my first fanart ever and the difference in engagement was insane to me. After years of getting minimal engagement on SM, seeing one of my drawings blow up was such a rush, but one of the downsides is that now it feels awkward to share anything that isn’t tied to an IP.

I’ve been sitting on 20-30 finished drawings this past week that are ready to go - their beautiful, they have my “style”, my friends love them - the problem is I know they’re going to tank in engagement because they’re mostly personal work (OCs, character design, portraits, sketches, etc.)

There are a couple of places where I feel okay posting them: Artfol, some subreddits, some discords, even forums are okay. But the big platforms - why bother?

I was sort of “sold” the idea early on that you should treat your art accounts like an artist’s journal, i.e. document your art growth, share your process, post on good days, post on bad days. I no longer feel like that’s a good idea going forward. As silly or petty as it sounds, seeing minimal engagement on stuff I loved working on does affect my mental state, especially when it’s a daily ritual you have to go through. It now feels extra pointless going through that whole rigamarole when I know that doing fanart is the only reliable way to grow your account.

I’m still going draw for myself (in fact, I’ve been going through a drawing frenzy lately), but I’d rather just keep these drawings for my friends and only post stuff on large platforms that I know will do well.

As an aside, these are all the drawings I’ve made in like 2 weeks. I’m really proud of them and yeah some are unfinished, but even if I were to spruce them up, I don’t feel they’re worth posting on places like instagram, twitter or tumblr (especially insta, remember every drawing means writing 15-20 hashtags to go with it, yuck).