Is it good to have a sketch account and a main account?

[yoboketto]

I’ve seen a few artist having separate accounts of their art. Ones is primarily of sketches and lineart the other is for full pieces. An example of an artist is, par0llel and her side account spam0_llel

But is this really necessary? If I wanted to post a sketch on my page would it be better to create a separate account? Please tell me your thoughts?

[igneriss]

I think most of your followers just want to see your arts and won't care if it's all on one account or two separate ones.
I guess it's mostly up to the artists if they want to keep it simple and just post everything on one account (bonus points- more frequent posts), or if they want to keep a consistent look of their profiles, without wips & finished arts mixed.
I personaly don't really post wips & sketches because I like how my gallery looks with just finished illustrations (I even hesitate a lot when posting traditional art because it kinda breaks the theme), but also am too lazy to have a separate account for sketches

[DualDragons]

Meh I don't really care, I post everything on my account. Maybe that's why it doesn't have that many followers though

[RedLenai]

There are going to be artists who separate accounts for wips, finished work or original content, fanart, non comic stuff, doodles, even NSFW work and so on.

Personally speaking I don't see the appeal to have different accounts for specific kinds of content, for as long as it's not something that goes against a site's guidelines that you clearly can't post or have to make a post redirecting to a site with the actual artwork.
As well, having separate accounts can actually lead to having less people seeing all the things you do, because even if you have in your description that you have a main/secondary account, most of people won't bother checking it out, the more steps a viewer has to do the less will see, because they rather scroll instead of taking the time (And that's why most of the time, the same person won't follow you on all your accounts)

Do what YOU consider more appealing, do what YOU consider more comfortable.

Sorry for the caps, but besides if you feel admiration for that artist, or any other one in particular, just because they do things a specific way doesn't mean you have to copy or follow their example 100% nor means that what they do is a must or is extreeeemely necessary, it's all about how you feel, how you want to present your work, what kind of content do you want to offer, and how accessible you want it to be for your viewers.

[MartaTod]

I don't know or follow anyone who separates finished work and sketches. A lot of comic artists I follow share their sketches as well as finished work. Honestly, I don't think people care. Unless you're posting too many things daily so for example you're worried the social media platform algorithm will shadow ban you. Judging just by the names you shared here, I'd say that artist separated accounts into one that is a gallery of polished work, and one where they have whatever.

What I did see, and can speak on from personal experience is, people separating their fanart, original art and sometimes NSFW accounts. The first two is mostly because a lot of fans might just be there for fanart and don't care much about someone's original art (so there's large followers fluctuations). The NSFW separation is mostly because it's meant for adults, the platform might not allow it, and some people just don't want to see it but want to enjoy artist's SFW work.

So, it's not necessary not split them. Just do whatever you feel most comfortable with.

[VibrantFox]

i believe having separate art accounts for sfw and nsfw content is important especially since you may have young followers but having sketchy work and finished work separated is usually up to an artists own personal preferences tho i personally keep them in the same places because its all still my work and it keeps the page active as opposed to having to wait between finished pieces (especially as a slow artist) plus it feeds the machine since even finished stuff is only on a persons timeline for like a half second

i will say on tumblr ive seperated my spam/reblog accounts from my main but that's mostly since my main sort of operates as a portfolio (tho i have shared current event news or dono links for causes i care about)

at the end of the day tho it just boils down to personal preference and how you want your social media pages organized. admittedly on twitter this can be tough coz not everyone will navigate to your media tab to look at all your art and if theres anything other than they can get kinda nitpicky (theres whole rants i swear) there also the matter of being able to organize twitter monents of your work which can be a little iffy since the way your tweets will be sorted can get really chaotic

i also realize as im typing this that i did make a sort of repost account for my art on twitter but that was more for pll who wanted just art and not all the other stuff i put on twitter

[TheLemmaLlama]

I'm not sure which is better in terms of audience engagement, but having a seperate sketch account might help you feel less hesitant in uploading your sketches. If everything's on one account, there might be a mental block about uploading rougher pieces because you want to keep your account dense with polished stuff. Idk if you deal with that yourself, but that's the benefit of two seperate accounts for me :]

[smokesalty]

I have a main and sketch account, and honestly it works for me, mainly because my main account followers expect finished illustrations and it keeps my account clean looking.

For me having a sketch account is freeing because I can post random sketches without worrying about how the account looks or what my followers want since I've stated it's a sketch account. It means I don't feel pressured to finish every artwork I make.

But - I've seen artists who make sketches work on their main account. If I include sketches on my main account, it's usually a carousel, where I have a finished illustration at the beginning as that's what shows up on my gallery.

[rumpenstiltzkin]

Meh I don't really care, I post everything on my account. Maybe that's why it doesn't have that many followers though

Im pretty much the same haha

the only reason I have another account is for my comic because i started to notice i have thos who just follow my comic and those who just follow my art so didnt want to spam my comic to much there but other than that i just post whatever on my art insta and it looks chaotic but i honestly rarely look at my own profile gallery and rarely at others as well, if i see art i like i follow and dont care about the estethic of the profile look

i think just do what you feel like and finds most appealing

[sushy00]

I wouldn't seperate for sketches/line-art and finished artwork. I do have a seperate account for crocheting and my other hobbies since they are totally different from drawing.

[frgmnt]

Don't split your audience, particularly if it's not very big. If your followers don't love you at your messy sketches, they don't deserve you at your finished complete artworks that took 20h
Keeping up art consistency, brand etc... worrying about that stuff too early will only hurt your progress and creativity.

(...I say this as a person who mostly posts my messy stuff on private twitter but I think there's a difference between sketchy stuff and stuff you're not ready to show to a wider audience yet. or maybe i am just a hypocrite, idek.)

[migxmeg]

I think it depends on the purpose of Instagram for you. For me, it's a nice place to go look at art I like and keep a collection of my own art that I like. Sometimes I find a dtiys that seems like fun but overall I keep it stress free by not really using it for networking or optimizing anything to get followers. That means I post whatever I feel like posting whenever I feel like posting it.

That said, if part of my "make art a viable career strategy" was to build a following on social media to get commissions, I would carefully post work to the quality and level of finish that a potential client could expect if they commissioned me. So if I offered sketch commissions, yep, would include some sketches on the main account. If I only offered finished illustrations, I'd keep sketches somewhere else.

[KSlinger]

I have a sketch account for West for the curious but it doesn't have loads of viewers. I make all those things anyway so why not put them there. If you're trying to make a career out of it I'm sure there's more reason to do it.

[Legendofgenii]

I put both on mine, but it’s mainly sketches and WIP stuff - which is personally what I look for on Instagram. I really enjoy watching artist’s Timelapses too.

[Caro]

You don’t really wanna split your audience. People will always miss the face that there’s a whole second account its just inevitable.

Plus, if someone’s following your work because they like it, they’re probably going to be interested in all of the other stuff too. I have followers who don’t like my current comic I’ve been posting at ALL but they’re not just there for one thing I do— they’re looking at EVERYTHING I do warts and all.

Social media isn’t a portfolio and doesn’t need to be perfect and consistent. Sketches might not perform as well as finished work on your IG but why separate it into a different account where it will just perform worse? At the very least you could always just post sketches and WIPs on your stories and set it up on your highlights so its not directly touching the grid if you care about grid aesthetics.

Also for NSFW stuff I just don’t post it uncensored because I don’t wanna get shadow banned or whatever but if you have a link to NSFW stuff outside the main account, you still cannot control minors clicking through and they WILL. You really can’t police who views the work unless you’re doing it under a paywall which clears a lot of the minors out on but it still isn’t foolproof. But it isn’t your job to protect every individual viewer of whatever work may be unsavory to them— its to get it out there!

[yoboketto]

Alright so I’m reading through all the responses and I think I’ll start posting my wips as post. However I’ll touch up my sketches so it still looks pleasing when looking through my page!

[BoomerZ]

People love to see process. Nothing is better to see a great artist work up a piece and you see the thought process. Don't deny your audience that.
And on an even easier note, do you know a professional artist that spreads his stuff across multiple accounts? Not normally (unless they dabble in NSFW stuff, but that can just be separated on the same account.).

[system]

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