Self Directed - Instagram Artists
- Serena Toovey
- Jun 14, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 15, 2020
Some artists on Instagram don't have a website or share much information about themselves or their work, but I wanted to include them in this blog as visual references.
@diffary
I don't know a lot about Diana as she does not have a website, however, I am greatly inspired by her digital art. Her digital sketches are soft yet portray great movement, and her illustrations are textured yet the lighting is so dramatic. I would like to try drawing in this sort of style. I will try to create some dynamic sketches like this too, and make mine look neater as well.
@castilvaniart
Castilvani is a digital equine artist from Russia. My favourite piece of hers is the top middle in the grid below. I love the soft greens and whites and how even though the colours are abstract, it looks so natural.
As well as the style shown above which is smooth with soft lines, they also work in a more realistic style. This style is very impressive as it is photorealistic. The style on the right more similar to my work with the textural lines of the fur. It is beautifully dynamic with the background and this is something I would like to try incorporating into my work. My coloured backgrounds are definitely unique to my work but I would like to be able to offer more styles.
They also offer adopts. I had to research this to fully understand what they are. Adoptables are character designs which are created by the artist... When an artist creates a unique species, they can choose to label it "open" or "closed." An open species means that any other artist can create a character themselves but have it be the same species that the artist originally created. Essentially the way it works is, an artist creates a character (sometimes entirely from scratch, sometimes using pre-drawn lineart that they or another person made), and puts it up for sale. The target demographic for these adopts are people, particularly young/novice artists, who want a character to use but are perhaps not that experienced in drawing or character development. So they pay another artist to be able to use a character they (the artist) created, be it for drawings or writing or whatever they want. I think another draw to these adopts is that the character becomes unavailable once it's sold off, so there's an element of urgency that sometimes excites people. It's not really the art itself they're buying, so much as permission to use the character.
This was (and possibly still is?) very popular on DeviantArt. And while buying the character with money is one possibility (and I would imagine the most popular on Tumblr especially), there are other ways to acquire the character depending on what the artist asks for. Like on DeviantArt, there's PTA (points to adopt, where you trade the character for a certain amount of points [a type of digital currency on DA]), DTA (draw to adopt, where you draw the character in exchange for getting to keep it), and OTA (offer to adopt, where you can name your method of payment [points/art/money] and the artist will give the character to whoever has the best offer). I think there's another method where you can trade other adopts for the character, but those aren't that common. I knew this sort of thing existed on DA, but I wasn't aware that people offer this on Instagram too.
Some people buy adopts simply because they like the artist and the art style and they like that design and are happy to support the artist. Some people use characters (of all genres, not just horses) for role play games and such. Some people use the characters to create more artwork from and some people use them in their books/stories as an extra character if they are struggling to design something specific or if they want something different that they wouldn't have necessarily thought to design.
After some more scrolling through Instagram, I found there are lots more equine artists who offer the same and more.
@art_ganya
Anastasia Ganya is a Russian artist who also offers adopts, such as the one in the middle. This is beautifully abstract design. Ganya also offers 'your character here' commissions.
A 'your character here' commission is a special type of commission where the person who offers it (the artist) provides an unfinished sketch of the final artwork. During the course of a YCH you can bid for a to be finished version that will then feature your character of choice in the final piece. The character will still feature the same pose and expression that the character rag doll in the sketch had.
YCH auctions have the big advantage of the buyer not being required to come up and define a pose, that he then has to explain to the artist. Instead, he can just provide the artist with a character reference.
A character auction is just auctioning the character itself. More often than not, the owner of the character will provide additional artwork with it - but it is no requirement. If you’re bidding for a YCH you need to provide the character for the finished piece. In a character auction, you are bidding for the character itself.
These are the grey digital drawings on her page. Some come with a background already drawn, whereas some come with lighting in place.
This is a very good way of offering more affordable commissions alongside normal commissions.
@artwhorse
Sarah Brase is a hobby artist. She offers sketches, character references, YCH and lineart. Often, I see equine artists share lineart so that they can focus on the character design itself.
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