Instalove

This blog post is dedicated to the visual artists out there, if there is still any, who are considering to open an Instagram account or not: Do it. Right now. And use it. Daily.

I am not an early adopter of anything. My nature is the one of a silent observer until something convinces me. So, it took a while until I decided to join Instagram. It was pretty exactly one year ago. See? Quite late. 

For people who work with a visual product Instagram is    t h e   social platform. I really don't understand why I needed so long to see that. I guess it was this feeling of "oh, no, not another account, another profile" especially since I found the ones I was using before (Twitter and FB) really good to maintain personal relationships but not so much for work interaction. It was my friend and colleague Johanna Fritz (who definitely is an early adopter and a super user of pretty much everything: go and follow her on Periscope, you will see) who convinced me to start instagramming. And I am so thankful for that.

It does not have anything to do with any other of the social platforms I know. Well, maybe Twitter works similarly for people whose strength is the in the written word. But for images? Instagram. There is a lot of interaction, things happen quickly and in a very organic way. So that completely strangers "discover" what you do and, if they like it (what they do, because they were naturally attracted to it in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't have "discovered" you), start to interact with you. The only thing you have to do is keep doing what you love and showing it there,  every day (or almost). And then things happen.

First of all: you have a front row view to see what parts of your work are better accepted by your growing audience. Also: you get tones of visual inspiration, which is our fuel and you connect with fellow artists that are on your wavelength. And then part of your audience becomes clients or collaborators.

Like in the case of the watercolour at the top of this post. It is the fruit of a collaboration with Caitlin Wing, a fashion and beauty photographer based in Los Angeles. 

Instagram has brought me some commissions and other collaborations about which I will tell you soon. So, you know, dear visual artist: see you on Instagram.