13 Art Websites Like DeviantArt to Visit Every Day for Inspiration

Inspiration is the most important thing an artist needs to be able to create.

It is a spark that lights up your desire to work and gives you the ideas to chase after. Of course, there is a possibility of going without inspiration, but it can lead to quick burnout, and nobody wants that.

Surely, there is more than one way to get inspired. You can look for the inspiration and ideas inside yourself and your own feelings, out in nature, in music or in the news. But the quickest and the most effective one is probably looking at what other artists do and/or how they do it.

It can be one artist that you love the most, several artists who work in your beloved style, or literally any kind of works that can light something up inside of you. There are no limitations and no patterns – you may choose whatever you are pleased to look at.

Looking at other artists’ works is actually also one of the most well-known and effective ways out of the art block. The key is to never compare yourself to others and just enjoy the process of drawing and acknowledging your progress, no matter how small it can be.

So, what websites exist in the wide and big Internet to give you this endless fuel of inspiration? Some of them are very well-known, and some are less popular, but it doesn’t make them worse at all.

If you decide to not only look but to post something as well, they can also help you connect with fellow artists and probably design your portfolio.

DeviantArt

This is probably the most well-known artistic community that is used by artists of all levels: from experienced professionals to beginners who share the simplest sketches. Due to the versatility of this website, lots and lots of content is posted there by lots of members every day.

It allows you to promote yourself, participate in challenges, find friends, share your art of absolutely any kind and receive feedback. The local community is very active and supportive of artists of any genre and any experience level.

While browsing DeviantArt, you can look for anything from sculpture or photography to digital art, varying from pixel art to detailed painted landscapes. All of them are sorted into categories to make your search easier.

Behance

Originally created to be a website for designers, Behance has later expanded to offer a place for other things, like crafts, fine arts, and others. Everything is organized in tidy sections for easy browsing, and it gives you the ability to create separate galleries and share entire projects.

It’s an online gallery for professional artists, that is commonly visited by companies or businesses who want to hire someone who fits their requirements. So, it’s more of a place for your best finished works to create a portfolio, rather than a social media-like platform. You can mention your previous work experience on your profile as well.

Behance also has a “strong bond” with Adobe, which makes it extremely easy for you to share your work and promote yourself if you use their products. But even if you’re not planning on posting anything there, you can easily use Behance to check out artists’ work.

Tumblr

While being the not specifically artist-targeted website, Tumblr is quite popular among artists and photographers. One of its perks is that you can customize your blog however you like and organize your posts any way you want. Even though it sometimes makes some blogs harder to read, especially when they have endless scrolling instead of numbered pages.

The content is sorted by topics and hashtags rather than styles/types of arts, which also makes this platform perfect for those who create fan-art. It’s easy to gain an audience and receive feedback on Tumblr. But if you want critiques or long commentaries, this might not be the best platform choice.

The website design gives you possibilities to exchange private messages with blog owners (if they enable this option). But there’s not too much space for leaving comments to their works directly. Most people prefer to just reblog or like posts quietly.

Twitter

Freelance Illustrator And College Instructor Samantha Mash (Interview #21) https://t.co/wwI9RKQbDm #interview #yourartpath

— Anna from YourArtPath (@YourArtPath) May 31, 2018

After the recent changes in Tumblr censorship policy, lots of artists, who draw nudity and other 18+ things, started migrating to Twitter. It allows you to post explicit drawings in decent quality and add hashtags to make it easier for people to find your posts. Or for you to find other people’s art.

Unfortunately, one cannot organize a gallery or even add too many pictures to a single post, and the posts can’t be long. But it’s quite easy to promote yourself on Twitter and to communicate with your audience. So, artists can leave links to other platforms where people can find more of their works and support them.

Virink

Virink is a social network that was created for artists who are mostly based in Russia and Eastern Europe. Its community is growing fast and the website is also translated into English and currently can be easily used by people from any country.

One of the coolest features on Virink is the “what to draw” function, that will give you random drawing ideas when you click the button. Which is also a good idea for getting yourself out of the art block. Scrolling the website and searching for the things you want is also very easy.

Virink doesn’t contain lots of advertising and exists thanks to the personal investments of its team and the support of the website users. Which makes it a truly independent platform.

Ello

The idea of creating Ello was to make an ad-free alternative to existing popular social networks. It was created relatively recently and has evolved into a website for artists and photographers to share their works with the world.

The website’s layout is satisfyingly minimalistic and clean, and the functions allow you to repost, like and comment on posts. All posts are sorted into categories from traditional or digital art to crafts and photography.

Another wonderful feature of Ello is the possibility to sell or buy art straight on the website. There are also competitions you can join, that will help you promote yourself even more.

CGSociety

Despite its name, CGSociety currently offers home not for digital artworks only. But it’s still an incredible place for anyone who has a thing for digital arts. 3D renders, concept arts, 2D digital paintings – whatever your heart desires.

But not only it is a platform for sharing artworks and connecting to the audience. It also features lots of useful educational material. Various tutorials and workshops are easily accessible at the website and will help you learn (and also give you some inspiration).

CGSociety also features active forums for chatting, receiving advice and critique for your work, if you need more education. They are easy to read and search through.

Instagram

View this post on Instagram

Harry Potter Fan Art in 12 Magical Styles Link in the bio • • Featuring: @mrdanidiez Check out the artists feed and show some love! ❤️ • • Tag your art with #featureyourartpath For a chance to be featured! • • #yourartpath_mrdanidiez • • • • #fineartphg #artlovers #arte #fineart_photobw #artsy #visualart #contemporaryart #fineartphoto #fineart #strangerthings #myart #artcollector #abstractart #instaartwork #artgallery #artnews #modernart #contemporarypainting #contemporary #instaartoftheday #fanart #yourartpath #illustration #illustrator #harrypotter #harrypotterfanart

A post shared by Anna from Your Art Path (@yourartpath) on Apr 21, 2018 at 3:33pm PDT

Instagram is another platform which is used by a lot of artists and photographers. Despite the fact that the quality of uploaded images or videos is quite poor, it’s a website where one can easily gain an audience and use the algorithms to promote themselves.

Lots of artists don’t use Instagram as their main platform and leave links to their portfolios or personal websites for better image quality. But despite that, lots of things are posted there daily, and you can easily fill your feed with inspiring content.

The ”explore” function will let you find even more interesting posts, related to the most popular trends and to topics you show interest in. Subscribing to hashtags will also give you the most popular content with these hashtags in your feed.

ArtStation

ArtStation is considered to be the fastest-growing digital art community. A lot like Behance, it’s a very convenient platform for creating a portfolio, adding links to your other social media, and even find yourself a job.

Browsing this website is easy, and you can scroll through different sections, choose specifically 2D or 3D arts, particular projects, etc. There are traditional artworks on this platform as well. But ArtStation is really leaning more towards digital art, so there won’t be too many of them and they won’t be too popular.

What makes it an amazing resource is the fact that it also features a marketplace (for 3D models, brushes and other things) as well as educational resources. So dive right in and get inspired.

Doodle Addicts

Doodle Addicts will win your heart over if you are into simple drawings. Also if sketches, scraps, and doodles are what inspires you the most (at least, at some particular moment). Sometimes quick sketches are the best in capturing emotions.

The “discover” section will offer you a large variety of drawings made with different materials, as well as digital art, and in different styles and genres. You can also search for artists based on their location if that’s what you need.

Doodle Addicts features a marketplace and some educational materials as well. Participating in numerous challenges the website offers and winning actual prizes can also be quite inspiring, isn’t it?

Pinterest

Pinterest isn’t really a website devoted specifically to art. In fact, people use it for all kinds of things, like DIY tutorials, recipes, and cat pictures.

But this is what actually makes it interesting. You can search for the materials you want and create separate collections and moodboards of your own, sorting them however you like. It’s kind of like a digital scrapbook full of things you love, either a public or a private one.

You can also follow other people to see what they are sharing and find more inspiring content. Art tips, art-related tutorials, guides, and techniques can also be found in there quite easily.

Follow me on Pinterest for blog updates and daily inspiration! 🙂

Dribbble

Focused on design and being a platform for designers, Dribbble can still give lots of inspirational content for painters, illustrators and other kinds of artists. Especially those who do digital art.

You can find particular people whose works you are interested in, or simply type in some search keywords and scroll what you find. Dribbble is also a really popular platform for people to hire designers, so the quality of the website content is really high.

If you are interested in graphic design, typography, web design, icon or logo design, illustration, or other related things – Dribbble will be an outstanding source of inspiration for you.

Pixiv

Pixiv is a Japanese website meant mostly for Japanese-speaking audience. So, if you know the language, are interested in the culture or in what’s going on in the Japanese art community – this is a place for you.

Of course, you can use it if you speak English, and change the website language to English. But most of the userbase is Japanese, hence most of the content is named in the Japanese language.

The search algorithms are updating constantly, and you can use tags while searching. And you can find more results by simply using any kind of online translator to translate a couple of words you’re looking for to Japanese.

It’s a perfect place as well if you love and enjoy anime art style or manga comics. The artists are able to upload full galleries if they draw a complete long manga.

Even though all of the websites mentioned are quite good for making you inspired, they still have some differences. And the differences are based on what you want, what layout styles are the most convenient for you and how much time you are willing to devote to this.

Knowing that, you can make a choice on which website from this list you would like to visit from time to time. Or maybe even all of them.

As the saying, that is believed to belong to John Lennon, goes:

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted”.

We all sometimes need to get our creative cup filled with inspiration in order to be ready to work again.

With that in mind, we can say that there is nothing wrong with spending some time scrolling through the web to find nice ideas.

So arm yourself with the list of inspirational sources of choice and have fun!

Hanna is an artist, poet and musician who lives in Minsk, Belarus. She loves food, cats, gigs and esoteric stuff.

Author: Hanna Martsynkevich

Artist and Writer