From the beginning Ideating stages I had an idea of what to do for my Digital Artefact. Prior to this subject, I had an digital art account on Instagram for around 4 years, and even though I never amassed a big following, I have always managed to post regularly and have drawings posted once every week or so. Since it was already part of my posting routine, it is easy to get used to.
This subject gives me a chance to brush up on what makes Instagram tick, and what people want to see from my profile. This DA is about curating my art profile even further, and make it a platform where I and my art are seen as accessible for a certain group of people. My art as it stands now is not curated enough to appeal to a specific demographic.
My goals for this project are-
To establish regular communication between me and my followers, such as regularly posting, responding to comments, making Instagram stories posting on Twitter etc.. I also asked for their input on drawings that I created and what they ‘liked’ better.
Another goal of mine is to curate my feed, so I polled my followers on what they thought and what drawings they liked the best.
I also had a discussion about monetization with a tutor (@UnicornDispatch) on Twitter, and the questions it raised about followers and ability to monetize were interesting. I had only considered a narrow perspective of monetization, and that was that people only monetized their content when they had a lot of followers to back it up (Like a few thousand). However, a tutor proved me wrong, saying that they had sold things without the thousands of followers that I thought you needed to have, and commented that you might as well “get paid for doing homework” and even $2 dollars extra is better than nothing at all.
Requirements-
To be able to do that, I need to do things such as post drawings regularly, and stories too. This means that to be able to post, I have to take the time to draw a few days of the week. I also have to respond to comments and any DM’s that I get, and respond to it in a professional manner. I also put tags on the bottom of every post that I make to try to get more exposure. I have also interacted with the art community by doing a #DTIYS (Draw This In Your Style) which is a popular challenge for large artist accounts to do, who notice your work and can possibly ‘share’ it to their followers.
Pros-
What I like about this DA is that Digital Art is what I like doing, and uses minimal resources + no cost. And I don’t have to vlog.
Cons-
This DA can be hard if its the ‘post everyday’ type, since it is hard to put out artwork every day. Some people post sketches on their Instagram, but most people want to see finished works. So this project isn’t entirely #FIST friendly, and I have to spread out posts evenly since I can’t do every day.
I feel like I am successfully exploring ideas for my concept and getting engaged with my audience well enough to get a good start on the next modules, Prototyping and Making!
Amely Koenig's Blog and Art 
This idea sounds lovely and doing something you enjoy will hopefully mean you’re motivated to put content out regularly. I think it’s really great that you’re starting to open your mind up to new ideas in regards to monetising your projects and after reading your post I had an idea that you could set up a feature where you take requests of artwork people commission from you. This way you may be able to make a bit of money from doing something you already enjoy and can perhaps challenge you in ways that increase you’re experience.
Also, in relation to the concern you had with not being able to post regularly as your art takes up quite a bit of time, have you considered making quick little tutorials on a specific way to draw something or a ‘how to draw a ___ for beginners’ using either a short video sped up or a collection of photos taken as you draw the crucial points if you’re not too keen on cinematography.
I had a similar worry in relation to my own DA which is a channel for cooking tutorials so to combat this, I’ve thought of different quick videos I can make that focus on a specific element of the process e.g. how to properly cut different vegetables or how to pick perfectly ripe produce. This allows for rapid prototyping and active/regular engagement of the audience.
There are lots of helpful websites to look at that offer helpful tips like this one I’ve attached. It’s technically about keeping followers engaged in an event you’re planning but the key points the author has made are quite versatile and fit well with just about any business trying to maintain interest and grow an audience online.
https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/followers-engaged-social-media-ds0c/
Here is another website about monetisation of artwork from instagram which you might find helpful
https://www.artworkarchive.com/blog/how-to-make-money-as-an-artist-on-instagram
Looking forward to seeing what you come up with and how your digital artefact grows over the next few weeks (and maybe even beyond that!)
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Love what you’re doing here Amely! You’ve got a real knack for creating a personal and engaging voice in both your blog and instagram, not to mention the personality through your amazing artwork. I think you could benefit from adding links to your bio to connect all of your online profiles (twitter, WordPress etc.), unless of course you’re trying to keep them distinctly separate haha. I love how you have already well established the account you have created, yet you’re still striving to improve and find new ways to create and engage, well done 🙂 Have you thought about posting short videos, maybe time-lapses of the work you create, personally I find those suuuuper enjoyable and satisfying to watch. Even super fun ideas like this video https://youtu.be/xrjnwR3s11Y would be interesting to explore – drawing characters from memory and comparing. I’m excited to see what content you continue to produce, and I wish you luck on the remainder of your digital artefact adventure ❤
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Hi，Amely, after read your blog, i search your project in instagram and i really love your painting digital art.n my da project, I have the same problem as you. I don’t have enough features to attract my audience. I think you gave me a good inspiration to get more exposure. Add some tags in my posting could let more people found my account. I think maybe find some forum platform about painting could attract more people with the same interests and hobbies to increase the exposure.Thank you to share your ideation for us,that’s really good.
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I love this idea, not only due to the similarities in my own projects. I have never considered this before and doing this is somewhat daunting, however reading your post has restored my faith in my own project, a youtube channel running a twitter, twitch, and Instagram to promote the channel. As an idea to think about opening up to a couple of medias promoting the same thing isnt a horrible idea. Thank you for restoring my faith 🙂
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Hey, I really like your Idea, it think it allows for a lot of personal and skill growth. That’s not to say that you do not have skill already, (i checked out your Instagram and really like your dragons from Eragon). I think you could experiment with your format, like have timelapses of your drawings. I know that i always really enjoy watching the process that artist go through to create art. I also would argue that posting the occasional sketch would be beneficial, as would perhaps trying different mediums. Posting stuff like the material you use and the things that inspire you and your art style are often also really interesting and engaging to an audience. I think you are doing really well and good luck with the next stage of your DA. 🙂
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This is a pretty nice detailed post, I’m just wondering if you’ve considered patreon as another platform you could try out? My tutor and some friends told me since i’m doing graphic design works it could be another place to start out.
I know some people may not want to see sketches but I enjoy seeing the beginning and I think others may like them as well, You could always post it with the instagram format of multiple images in one post, you could show off your finished art and people can slide to the other images that show how you started or your initial sketches to different progress points.
I’m planning to do something similar with my designs so ill either start off with the finished product or ill show the initial concepts and then it will go to the other end.
Overall i’m still not sure if i’d like to monetize my content just yet but it’s something to think about, I don’t think i’ll have a huge following but I don’t think we should let that bother us :^)
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