Probably the earliest place I've ever posted my artwork was on Sketchfu, an oekaki site that had social functions, including comments, reactions, profiles, and private messages. I got my best start as an artist on there. I had so much fun every day, through the drama, bans, roleplay shenanigans, friendships... then I became disinterested over time, moving to deviantArt, aaand it closed.
From there as mentioned, I went to deviantArt. It was a whole new battleground for me- a website totally dedicated to artwork! Writing! Shenanigans!! That became my outlet, fort, paradise for art. I loved browsing the deviations posted, reading comments, posting my own works. It was a great place to find and connect with other artists. Over time again, I gravitated to other types of websites, and began to post artwork on 4Chan and Neopets. That's how I stopped using deviantArt- and rarely revisit it post-Eclipse.
During the advent of Discord, I started to post my artwork there. Many pieces have been LOST from that time, due to the fact Discord is not a site meant to be used as an archive. At all. Ever. But I didn't know that, and happily posted away. It wasn't til years later that I stopped posting on 4Chan altogether, and began exclusively posting on Discord. Still a big oops, but by then I learned to save (almost all) of my artwork.
So what happens here? I join this big group of artists, hang out, have fun. Alright. We connect on Twitter, interact here and there, and so I post once in a while. Well, eventually, I just stopped posting stuff I made. I only posted stuff meant for other people. Eventually I did start posting stuff I liked, but then I didn't at times.
One of the few pieces to survive my need to DELETE.
It was a birthday gift for a friend, which explains that.
I think I just got fed up at some point. There was Sheezy, I joined Sheezy, Sheezy DIES after I upload two year's worth of content. I join Buzzly, Buzzly is shunned for having an insane admin. Inkblot's up, everyone says it's promising, Inkblot is ROTTING. There are no winners with this constant attempt at creating a new art site. Twitter currently has the strongest hold on artist activity, having many international artists, a feed, so many people posting, non-artists to interact with posts... it's too much that no budding art site can truly promise. So I'm kinda done with posting my art anywhere else, at least frequently. I delete my art after some time just because I feel like it. It's that easy to do on Twitter.
Have you seen my 2022 art gallery?
Yeah, I posted ALL that shit to Sheezy.
Then BOOM. GONE!
Here I am, on my little island, me and myself. I feel freer than on any other site to post the things I make, to keep it up, to make it presentable. While I may not get seen, may not get found, at least I have somewhere consistent to keep my artwork. No need to rotate through different platforms every few years. I'm done with that. I do have to wonder who else carries this sentiment. Are there other artists, marooned on their own little islands, wondering if there'll ever be a time we can come back together again?
This is my face when thinking about the current state of art sites.
This was also an image I posted on Twitter, but deleted after some time.
Oops!