Creating art is fun. However, is even more fun if you can share it with others 🙂 I gathered a list of most popular art communities where you can set up your own gallery (or sketchbook thread). Such art platforms are also a great place to make new friends!
Deviantart
Visit Deviantart’s art community
If you are looking for a website to showcase your artwork, you should definitely create an account on DeviantArt. It’s one of the most popular websites worldwide. You can find here people at a different age from all around the world- for example, USA, Russia, Europe, China, Africa – of course, most members know the English language. There are various groups that unite different nations/interests/ages – there are tons of them, so you will definitely find something for yourself!
Deviantart has a high amount of art categories – digital art, traditional art, photography, sculpture, literature, animation – that are only few of them. Each of category has subcategories(for example: “Digital art” has 12 subcategories) – it allows us to really narrow the search.
Deviantart not only allows you to share your art, but also sell your art as a print. If you are a professional artist, you can create here your own art portfolio for free.
Behance
Visit Behance’s art community
Behance is a website commonly used by professional artists as a portfolio to showcase their artworks. This site has an application for smartphones, to provide an easy access to its members. Behance allows you to browse millions of different projects created by the best artists around the world. In the application, we can filter the search system by browsing the latest activity and the latest works of the artists we observe. In addition, it offers access to interesting works from various fields – fashion, industrial design, illustrations, fine arts, typography, film graphics and even sound projects.
Artstation
Visit Artstation’s art community
ArtStation began from conversations with many of their artist friends who were expressing that they wanted a single, simple service to build their portfolios on and find jobs. Thousands of artists and studios worldwide rely on ArtStation every day. It’s a huge showcase platform for, film, games, media & entertainment artists. Not only you can create here your own portfolio – on this site you can also find job offers from many famous companies.
If you remember CGHUB (it was a really huge community site for 2d and 3d artist in the past), I would compare Artstation to CGhub. Since CGHUB, unfortunately, is officially closed, Artstation filled out the gap that was left by the shutdown (it’s a subjective opinion, however, I,’m sure that many people will agree with this thought).
Artstation’s site has a modern UX design, which makes browsing art easier. It’s especially important for 3D artists that require multiple angles and states to show off the modeling and texture details. There’s an amazing feature that allows you to rotate a 3d model: example
Conceptart
Visit Concept’s art community
Forum art community – actually, one of the oldest and biggest art communities on the internet (Seoquake shows that the site was launched on 2002). In comparison to previous websites (Deviantart, Artstation), you don’t have a possibility to create your own gallery page, but a forum thread in a “Sketchbooks” section. In such thread, you can post your artworks and comments related to your work – you can also expect replies with pieces of advice from the Conceptart members 🙂 This is one of the premier forums on the web for artists interested in learning character, creature, and environment design. It’s worth a look if you’d like to develop your digital painting skills alongside your 3D repertoire.
On Conceptart you can find various categories, related to the type of art you are interested in (Fine art, 3d art, Graphic Design, the art of photography). You can also find here forum sections dedicated to digital hardware and software for artists – Painter, Photoshop, Wacom.
Of course, you will find here a section dedicated to job offers for artists! So, if you are looking for an art job, that’s a place you should definitely check out!
Polycount
Visit Polycount’s art community
Polycount is a website and community of professional & hobbyist artists that specialize in creating 3D art for video games. You can sign in to Polycount via Steam, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, or email. It was founded on April 1, 1998 by Andrew Risch and Ted Shockey, the site was originally named Q2PMP (Quake2 Player Model Pack), featuring user created Quake 2 plug-in characters.
You can find Polycount threads related to 2d and 3d art. Members of Polycount can open their “Sketchbook” thread, where they share artworks and post pieces of advice. If you like to participate in art competitions, be sure to visit Polycount’s section dedicated to “contests and challenges”. Such competitions are a great opportunity to become noticed by companies – Polycount hosted contests for creating video game art assets and concept art for well known games, including Darksiders II, League of Legends, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and Dota 2.
Additionally, on this website you can find a wiki for resources for 3D artists.
CG Society
Visit CGSociety’s art community
The CGSociety is an art platform that supports digital artists at every level by offering them a range of services to connect, educate and promote digital artists worldwide. On the front page are placed tiles with stunning artworks of CGSociety members. You can find here inspiring articles and interviews with professional artists. CGSociety provides us a possibility to create our own portfolio page, as well as creating our own “Sketchbook” thread on forum. Beyond the forums themselves, CGSociety also holds contests, workshops, regularly publishes production spotlights, and has a premium membership option that lets subscribers build a portfolio page through the site.
PaigeeWorld
Visit Paigee’s art community
Paigee World is a social network for artists and art enthusiasts. A community where you can improve your artistic skills, share your art, admire other artists and meet new friends. It has an extensive tag structure. PaigeeWorld is a real-time, dynamic social network which allows people to come together to share art, follow their favorite artists and make friends from around the world.
Pixiv
Visit Pixiv’s art community
Pixiv is a Japanese online art community for artists. It was first launched as a beta test on September 10, 2007 by Takahiro Kamitani. Pixiv Inc. is headquartered in Sendagaya, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. As of September 2016, the site consists of over 20 million members, over 43 million submissions, and receives over 3.7 billion page views monthly. Pixiv aims to provide a place for artists to exhibit their illustrations and get feedback via a rating system and user comments. Works are organized in an extensive tag structure which forms the backbone of the website.
Aminoapps
Visit Aminoapps art community
Largest Amino visual arts community. Members are encouraged the post their original artwork such as: Drawings & Doodles, Digital Art, Paintings, Sculptures, Printmaking, Design and more. If you wish to share your poetry, writing or music you need to include an original visual art. Aminoapps is an application designed for mobile users, where they can create their own groups, or join communities related to their interests.
Artrift
Visit Artrift art community
Artrift is where creative expression meets freedom of expression. It started out in 2009 as a platform for creative minds to share their artworks. It’s a friendly and extremely supportive community. Simply explore, discover and be discovered by others – and of course trail other artists and make new friends. On Artfit you will also find helpful articles with links to tutorials.
Sketchlab
Visit Sketchlab’s art community
Sketchlab is a community of people who aim to be professional concept artists and provides a starting point for those who are looking for online resources and help with daily practice. It’s a great place for art talks, networking and sharing information.
3DTotal
Visit 3dTotal’s art community
3dtotal offers inspirational and educational resources for artists, both through its website for CG artists and its wide range of art books.
3dtotal originally started in August 1999 as a project by Tom Greenway to make a simple 3D resource site. The platform experiences over 220,000 visits through the website, and now produces an impressive collection of books covering both digital and traditional art, a range of sketching tools, and anatomy reference figures for artists.
The team of 3dTotal now consists of 16 core staff, plus many other freelancers from around the world, who together keep the site jam-packed with up-to-date content and products, and provide a friendly customer service too!
Coroflot
Visit Coroflot’s art community
Coroflot.com creates better professional experiences for designers of all backgrounds all over the world. The Coroflot Team takes personal responsibility for the contribution to the design community, whether it’s connecting designers with outstanding career opportunities, giving innovative companies access to leading talent, or bringing exposure to amazing design work. The sire was launched in 1997.
Zerply
Visit Zerply’s art community
A platform that supported creative contractors in a proactive way to the benefit of the companies needing their talents.
Zerply was started by three creatives who were frustrated with the fact that at the end of every project they were released back into the ‘freelance ocean’ without any support, having to fight the waves of uncertainty to find their next gig. This was taxing psychologically, creatively and financially.
Drawcrowd (currently under maintenance)
DrawCrowd is mostly occupied by illustrators, however, you can find here all kind of art, the website allows you to collect your favorite art and recommend artists. In comparison to other platforms, its design promotes Manga/Anime style. As a user, you gain levels for certain achievements (for example: for uploading and artwork). So, if you are a fan of manga comics and this particular style – this platform is exactly for you.
Other sities to showcase your artworks
Ctreate a Sketchbook on forum
Pick a forum you like and start an “art dump” thread. Create a thread, name it something awesome like “Justin’s 3D Art” (you can do better than that, though), and post all your work there.
Not just your finished pieces, all your work. Sketches, WIP images, loose concepts, test renders, and yes, finished images as well. The more you post, the more comments and suggestions you’ll get—people tend to connect more with a final render if they’ve been watching it progress from start to finish.
Forum threads can be a hassle to navigate once they start to grow, but the plain and simple truth is that your work is much more likely to be seen by people that can help you improve if you post it on a forum instead on your blog.
* I’m still working on this article, if you know any great art community, please let me know!