No Love for my Ukraine piece HELP!
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Long time listener, part time member, first time poster!
I was proud of this piece! One of my best in this styles I've made. I absolutely nailed the my color scheme vision. I felt like it was a great portfolio piece to build towards my goal of editorial illustration work.
but it tanked no love at all on insta...I was wondering am I missing something? I get his face is somber but that was the attitude I wanted to capture. Craving critiques, theories or ideas!!! -@BradysGallery
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@bradysgallery I think its great! Maybe include more #s?
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I have no idea about it's effectiveness with instagram, but I can tell you my gut reaction to it. My first impression is that the craftmanship is excellent and overall it's a striking image, but I'm not sure about the arm holding up the bullet. I think bullets and war imagery could work with this quote, but since you've chosen such a striking close up portrait, my mind wants to associate it more as a statement of his overall character and leadership, and then the bullet feels distracting/too literal/redundant.
If we take away the bullet/hand, then I think it's worth considering if there might be a more effective cropping, head gesture, or expression. There might not be, and the portrait as is, might hit the perfect tone, but it's something I think is worth exploring. Anyway, just my personal quick take!
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I love this piece. Clever coloration to keep with the Ukrainian flag. Twitter is so hit or miss. When certain people retweet me, I’ve gotten some traction, but I’m a wee fish in an ocean otherwise. I don’t take it personally. I just say what I came to say. You never know who it will affect.
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Honestly I didn't realize it was a bullet he was holding until, which might be more of a problem on a smaller screen.
Maybe the blue area behind his head you could have bullet shapes going across the length in the background very lightly. That would overwhelmingly communicate what you're going for I think.
And yeah about socials - you could quite literally have the best artwork in the entire world and there's zero guarantee you'd get traction. We've got no control over who sees it and that problem is exacerbated significantly if you don't have a huge following, which is an incentive for IG to actually push that out. Based on 1,000 internal variables we don't even know about, Twitter and Instagram might show it in the feed of only 20% of your own followers and no one else.
Great piece!
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@BradysGallery Your illustration is a good portrait of the Ukrainian President. Do you usually receive a consistent number of likes on Instagram? Or did you mean your post didn't gain the traction you had expected? The issue may have to do with the market and timing.
I'm not aware what Pro-Ukraine art is trending on Instagram, but I believe average users of the platform continue to follow the same set of behaviors. People hit the like button for images that best represents themselves. If the image doesn't express a statement on behalf of the user then it's less likely they will hit the button.
The quote "I need ammo, not a ride." refers to his personal conflict (People speculating if he an actor or a president). Maybe if you use either "I need ammo" or "Not a ride" then the image could more easily resonate with people.
Editorial art often has an expiration date. The quote your piece references was spoken on February 26th. Your upload would've required a quick 24hr turnaround to remain fresh to people's memory. Also, I believe the hype wave of uploading images in support of Ukraine has peaked. People remain conscious of the war but a certain phase in public attention has passed.
Although you've labeled it as editorial art, I think if falls more in the category of propaganda art. I'd recommend studying Montgomery Flagg's poster I want you for U.S. Army and identity why that piece continues to be powerful.
You should continue to be proud of your piece.
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@bradysgallery I have a small nitpick, it has nothing to do with instagram, but the hand looks a bit too big when comparing it to the size of his face.
As for instagram, it is not a reliable source for if the artwork is good or not. I recommend making a reel with it and instagram will want to push it to a bigger audience. IG and Facebook in general is not great right now, especially for artists. -
@bradysgallery I’m going to offend you by saying this so I apologize in advance. But are you capitalizing on this nation’s tragedy to get famous on IG? If not, then it shouldn’t bother you if this gets a lot of engagement. Do what you must to support them and don’t worry about the numbers.
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@BradysGallery I think your illustration is great! My guess is that the problem is not the piece in itself but that the algorithm was not in your favor this time.
I find that reaching new people can be hard just with hashtags and that it easily gets lost in the sea other other peoples posts, so it could just be that not many people got to see your illustration. Even the people who are already following you do not always get your posts in their feed.
Going in on your insta I can also see that you not long ago posted a very similar illustration with the same pose and quote in the caption and this could be a reason why your followers where not as active too. They had already seen it before and that makes it harder to grab their attention and for them to like it again (even though this is a more stylised version).
I know it can be discouraging when your illustrations don't get the interaction you hope for but that does not make the piece bad, just the number of people that sees it. Social media is all about timing, a confusing algorithm and a huge dose luck and it does not favor artists.
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@bradysgallery yeah I could use an education on picking the bbest #s!
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@asyas_illos Appreciate it! Most portraits out there were just his face or zoom calls So I was trying to create something new and really drive home the ammo part. I do agree about the crop I had a hard time finding one with the hand
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@crispalomino Thanks the colors were fun to work with. I agree about social I think I was just hoping this would have a bigger impact
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@crispalomino I was taking a chance with the colors for the bullet but you did realize it's a bullet so that works for me lol was trying to keep it subtle so the focus was on Zelesnsky even tho the bullet was in the foreground.
Yeah it's great when the algorithm blasts you off lol but I thought with my audience it would do a little better
Thanks for the words and complement!
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@willicreate Thanks for the kind words.
It was just a little below my average and honestly thought my audience would be more interested ( maybe the algorithm got me)
I was hoping this could be a portfolio piece towards editorial work. More in the idea of solid portrait work that I see in magazines often. Love me some Flagg though maybe I should look at his stuff less If my style is going to propaganda... but I do love those styles
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@kayleenartlover That was something I was taking phot reference for of my self lol I couldn't quite decide what was the appropriate size since I did want it bigger (to be closer) I couldn't quite tell glad it wasn't just me tho
I agree with you there!
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@nyrryl-cadiz I knew this would be a possible critique before posting. "Capitalizing on tragedy" is not my intention I wanted to capture a hero in the face of this tragedy. So in asking for critique I was more worried I wasn't doing his legacy justice if something was off in my art I was missing. I do make art to show others and share a message not for my own pure enjoyment, so I would have liked it if more and joined me in sharing. At the end of the day I do think it is important to make art about tragedy. Look no further than Picasso's Guernica and what would have been the impact of that work if no one saw it?
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THANKS! @ellinor Yes I was worried about the similar posts and maybe that was the problem. Or maybe the realistic colors were better! To this piece was way cooler and was hoping my audience would connect with it more!
I have given up hope on the algorithm lol
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@bradysgallery hi again. This is my second reply. I removed the first one since I felt I wasn’t being as clear as I wanted.
Since you mentioned you are more concerned about the portrait’s accuracy because of the low engagement, then my advise is still the same: don’t focus on the engagement numbers. A post’s performance on social media is a BAD gage of its quality.
This is a great piece. It did not perform as well as you expected most probably because of Instagram’s algorithm.
Don’t get too caught up on this piece. You’ll be helping more by creating more art rather than perfecting and trying to figure out what went wrong with this one.
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I would blame the algorithm as others have said. I discovered this week for myself how unjust algorithms can be when I posted a number of bird photos I had taken of a snow goose migration to a Facebook group. Even though numerous people posted MUCH better photos after I did, my post continued to rack up a ridiculous number of likes while their's languished all because I was one of the first posters so my post kept getting pushed to the top of people's feeds which in turn meant it got more likes which pushed it farther up, etc. I was frustrated on behalf of the better photographers that were not being noticed just because of the stupid algorithm. Likewise, the number of your likes may have nothing to do with the quality of the piece but may be due to the number of people posting things in support of Ukraine and the consequent bias of the algorithm that left yours buried under previous posters. It's enough to make one want to give up social media.
Laurie DeMott
instagram.com/demotlj
