c/digital-art-showcase

Lost a whole digital painting at a convention because of bad file naming

I was at Anime Expo in LA last July, showing my portfolio to a few gallery people. Had a piece I spent maybe 30 hours on, complex cityscape with neon lights. When I went to pull it up on my tablet, I couldn't find it because I saved it as "untitled_15" or something dumb like that. Took me 5 frantic minutes in front of them to locate it, and I could tell they were annoyed. Now I name files with the date, the subject, and a version number every single time. Has anyone else lost work to messy file organization?

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jasonallen•1d ago

Noticed something weird about art show acceptance rates

I was looking at the stats for a big online digital art showcase I submitted to last month and saw only 12% of entries get accepted. That seemed low but then I checked another popular showcase and it was even lower at like 8%. I found these numbers on a forum where artists post their rejection letters and acceptance notices. It got me wondering if they just accept less to make the show look more exclusive or if the quality bar is really that high. Has anyone here ever gotten into one of those low acceptance rate showcases and felt like it made a difference for their career?

2 comments

the_diana•2d ago

That $50 brush pack from that popular artist turned out to be unusable junk

I bought this big bundle of Photoshop brushes from an artist with like 50k followers on social media. Huge mistake. The bristle textures are completely muddy, they all just make these weird smeary blobs. Tried using them on 3 different pieces and had to scrap each one. I could have just used the basic round brush and gotten better results for free. Anyone else get burned by overhyped brush packs?

2 comments

wood.faith•2d ago

Walked into a gallery opening in Portland and saw digital paintings blown up to 6 feet tall that looked like oil on canvas from across the room

Half the artists there argued it cheapened the medium while the other half said it finally got digital art the respect it deserved in a physical space, so which side actually has it right for showcasing work?

c/digital-art-showcase

Lost a whole digital painting at a convention because of bad file naming

Noticed something weird about art show acceptance rates

That $50 brush pack from that popular artist turned out to be unusable junk

Walked into a gallery opening in Portland and saw digital paintings blown up to 6 feet tall that looked like oil on canvas from across the room

Rant: My drawing tablet pen stopped working mid-brushstroke on a live stream

Used to flatten every single layer in Procreate before saving

TIFU by forgetting to save my layers before merging

My gallery wall fell down at an art fair and I lost half my prints

That 3AM colorspace trick finally stopped my art looking washed out on Instagram

PSA: Just found out my tablet's pressure sensitivity was set to 25% for the last 3 months

The one thing nobody tells you about color calibration on a budget

TIL my layer masks were bleeding into each other for 6 months

Had a talk with a retired illustrator at a coffee shop in Portland

Hit 500 downloads on my print pack and almost deleted it the day before

I started uploading 3 variations of each digital painting and my engagement doubled

Tried making pixel art with Aseprite first, switched to Procreate and never looked back

Pro tip I ignored: "Always flatten your canvas before posting"

Always hated digital brushes that tried to look like real paint... then I tried one from a guy in Portland

Had been flipping my canvas horizontally for months before I saw the mistake

That one critique about my lighting that finally clicked

I finally walked out of a gallery opening in Portland last Friday and it changed how I post my work online

Just realized my drawing tablet stopped working mid-project yesterday

Just realized that AI upscaling tool I hated is actually pretty good now

Spent 6 hours on a digital painting and it looked like a potato

That $200 drawing tablet I picked up on a whim turned out great