You are a passionate digital artist and now you want to show your beautiful creations to the world. But where to display digital art? In this post, I’ve put together the best places to post your digital art online. Not all the places are the same, so you can find out about the pros and cons here to make up your mind and pick the best option to show your artwork!
You love digital art and now you want to share your beautiful creations with the world? Creating an online digital art gallery is definitely a great idea!
You cannot only share your artwork with fans and art lovers. But you can potentially reach collectors and curators, too, who are interested in buying your art. That way, displaying your digital art online is also a fantastic means to make money selling art.
With the many social media and art sharing websites around, it can be difficult to find the right platform to post your digital art.
Each site has its pros and cons. But sometimes, it’s hard to figure out where to display digital art, unless you try each site and see for yourself. To spare you the hassle, I’ve put together the best places to show your artwork, so you can get an idea of the benefits of each of the sites.
Where to post digital art?
When you’re trying to sort out the best site where you should post your digital art, there are quite a few things to consider.
First of all, it depends on what kind of digital art you want to share. Manga or anime art? Digital illustrations? Photo manipulations? 3D or 2D renders?
Then there’s the question who you want to share your work with. Do you want to build a following, find a like-minded community, or get gigs from international companies?
These are the questions you need to ask yourself before making your choice. But the good news is that you don’t have to limit yourself to one digital art gallery platform! You can display your digital art on several sites, if that’s the best way for you to go.
Related: How To Start A Digital Art Business (w/ FREE Art Business Startup Checklist)
where to display digital art?
These are the websites that I recommend for sharing digital art. I’ve posted my digital art to a few of them, so I have a good idea of the pros and cons that are awaiting you.
So let’s dive in and have a look at the best places to display digital art and why you might want to consider showing your artwork on there!
The 10 best places to display digital art
DeviantArt is one of the oldest art sharing sites around, and it’s also the site where I pretty much started out as a digital artist.
The site still has a huge number of users, even though there isn’t as much engagement as there used to be. While artists used to get lots of feedback on their ‘deviations’ (the artwork they upload), things have been getting pretty quiet in recent years.
Still, DeviantArt is a useful platform where you can display digital art. You cannot only create an online gallery, but also sell commissions and prints, post journal entries, and contribute to their many art forums.
Pros
- Still one of the largest art sharing sites
- Great for digital artwork of all types
- Possibility to sell prints, commissions, and more
Cons
- Not as much engagement as before
Behance is an art sharing platform that is owned by Adobe. That doesn’t mean you need to have a Creative Cloud subscription to be able to use the site. However, you will need to create an Adobe ID (at no cost).
You can find a plethora of artworks on Behance, and many of them are created using one of the Adobe apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator.
Behance has a more professional focus than DeviantArt. Many professional digital artists showcase their artwork on Behance (with a tendency to more photography and graphic design content), and there’s even an entire section dedicated to jobs in the industry.
Pros
- Lots of professional artists use the platform
- You can find and apply for job opportunities
- You can follow some of the greatest talents in the industry
Cons
- Not so adequate for community building
ArtStation is an online marketplace for all things digital art, with a focus on video games and film animation. You can find everything from finished creations, work in progress shots, tutorials, courses, and more.
Just like Behance, ArtStation is more a place to make business connections than to build a community. Lots of professional digital artists show their artwork on ArtStation, reveal their creation process, and hope to land a contract with the industry. In fact, it’s not uncommon that the big companies browse ArtStation for new potential.
That said, ArtStation is rather a platform to forge business connections than it is to establish a social network with like-minded artists!
Pros
- Great to host your professional digital art portfolio
- You can learn from the big names in the industry through tutorials and courses
- High-quality work to admire
Cons
- Strong focus on film and animation
CGSociety, as its name suggests, is the place for CGI (computer-generated imagery). The digital artwork you’ll find on CGSociety is absolutely mind-blowing.
Many artists use the latest technology to create ultra-realistic work to a point where you cannot tell the difference between a real photo and a digitally created image.
But CGSociety is also a great place to build a network and promote your art.
At the same time, you can use the forums to speak to other artists or learn from them through the tutorials they publish.
Pros
- The go-to place for all computer-generated artwork
- Great opportunities to build a network and promote your art
- Ultra-realistic art created with the latest technology
Cons
- Quite hard to gain attention due to the large number of users
Artfol is the newest art sharing site on the list. It was officially launched in April 2021 and took heed of the shortcomings of the established art sites.
DeviantArt and ArtStation, for example, have been criticized for featuring the same art styles on their front pages over and over again. That’s why Artfol promised to offer all their artists equal opportunities to be seen on their home page. Likewise, the likes you get on your works are not being shown publicly.
Currently, Artfol is only available as mobile app. Whether the art platform keeps what it promises is yet to see in the future! At least for now, it sounds good enough to give it a try…
Pros
- Most recent platform for artists
- Promises to give equal opportunity to all art styles
- Small userbase makes it easier to build a network and get your art noticed
Cons
- Only available as mobile app so far
Pixiv started out as a small artist website based in Japan. But over time, it has grown into huge community with millions of users from around the world.
Due to its origin, Pixiv is still extremely popular among anime and manga artists. Many professional Japanese illustrators have their digital art gallery hosted on Pixiv, but it’s also a great place where to display digital art of other types.
At its beginnings, Pixiv had a very crowded navigation (as you can find it on many Asian sites). However, the creators worked hard to give the platform a cleaner look and now Pixiv keeps gaining traction. It even features membership options where you can have your fans pay for exclusive content you provide!
Pros
- Especially popular among manga and anime artists
- Large community of artists from all over the world
- Option to sell premium content to your fans via membership subscriptions
Cons
- Less popular for other types of digital art
Pinterest is – as you all know – mainly a social media network, but it’s definitely worth a mention among the best places where to display digital art! Why is that? Because Pinterest can be one of the best marketing tools for artists! Pinterest is a visual search engine, which makes it perfect for showing artwork.
Fans and potential buyers who find your art on Pinterest can go directly to your website to connect with you or make a purchase. In terms of Pinterest vs Instagram for artists, Pinterest has surely an edge in that respect!
The good news is that Pinterest Pins have a much longer lifespan than any other social media posts. Your pins will always be available and searchable, as long as you keep your Pinterest account active. On Pinterest, that means posting consistently several times throughout the day.
There are a few tools that allow you to schedule your pins automatically. Tailwind is one of the best and has already helped lots of people make their pins go viral. (→ What is Tailwind for Pinterest?)
To learn more, check out my posts on how an artist should use Pinterest and how to sell digital art on Pinterest.
Pros
- Visual search engine perfect for showing artwork
- You can link your pins back to your own artist website or ecommerce store
- You can easily keep your account active using Tailwind
Cons
- You need to post consistently to gain traction
Dribbble is a platform for creatives from around the world. It’s listed among the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the US and has partnerships with Google, Facebook, Apple, and others.
Dribbble has a beautiful-looking interface and allows you to connect with designers and companies recruiting talented artists. You can upload your digital art portfolio to Dribbble and advertise your skills in one of its job boards.
Dribble reminds a bit of Behance in the way they display art portfolios. Because just like on Behance, your portfolio will appear with a single thumbnail only. Some artists like it, others find it limiting – but that’s totally a matter of taste. If it sounds like right down your alley, you can sign up with Dribbble for free and start a project today!
Pros
- Specifically designed for artists and other creatives
- You can connect with companies and get jobs
- Job and e-learning forum, marketplace and inspiration included
Cons
- Projects appear with a single thumbnail only
Instagram is kind of a half-hearted entry on the list. Well, Instagram is a visual-driven social media network focusing on imagery and videos. There are artists who use Instagram to show their artwork and some were able to gain quite some exposure.
But truth is that it’s much harder to get your art noticed on Instagram than it is on other art sharing sites. (Check out the DOs & DON’Ts for Artists using Instagram, if you want to find out more.)
The secret to being successful on Instagram are still #hashtags and posting on a regular basis, just like on Pinterest. Don’t worry, you don’t need to do all the posting yourself every day, if you don’t have that much time to spare. Planoly is an app that helps you schedule your posts and manage hashtags and captions of your artworks for you! (→ Is Planoly safe?)
Related: How To Upload Digital Art To Instagram & Make It Look Good!
Pros
- Visual-based social media network great for posting images and videos
- With the right hashtags and persistency you can grow a following
- Schedule pins and manage hashtags & captions with Planoly
Cons
- Hard to gain exposure among the millions of users
Where to display digital art? Is there still another place? Yes, definitely! Believe it or not – one of the best places to showcase your digital art is on your own artist website.
There are lots of good reason why you should make a website for your art, and I’ve put together all the must-haves that make a good artist website. In fact, I have an entire section on this site dedicated to building your own artist website.
If you don’t have any coding skills and previous experience building websites, it’s best to use one of the website builders that are easy to use – even for beginners.
Here are some of the best options where you can create a website for your digital art:
- Squarespace
- Wix
- Weebly
- Pixpa
- Shopify (for ecommerce stores)
If you are willing to invest some time learning a few technical skills, you can make an artist website with WordPress. It’s not as hard as you might think. I have heaps of free WordPress tutorials to help you get your website up and running quickly!
I have created my artist website (the one you are on right now) all on my own, using WordPress, Elementor, and the OceanWP theme. And if I can do it, you can do it, too!
Related: Is WordPress Good For Artists? – An Artist’s Opinion…
Can you hang digital art on your wall?
Just on a side note: apart from displaying digital art online, you can also hang it on your wall!
Nowadays, fine art can be digital and in fact, there’s a huge market for digital art. Many artists use the opportunity to generate an income selling art prints. Here you can find the best websites to sell art prints (and other merch) online.
Some things you need to consider carefully when selling art prints is to save your creations in the best file format for printing digital art and select the best paper for printing digital art.
Apart from that, there is nothing in your way that would keep one from hanging digital art on your wall!
Related: TOP 10 Tools Digital Artists Use In Creating Their Artworks
Here are some examples of the digital art prints that I sell:
