Whether you're in the habit of posting free illustrations online on a regular basis, or you have a significant backlog of OC-focused material, or if you make shortform supplementary material related to a longform work (non-canon one-shots and sketches related to a webcomic, fr'instance), or anything else - package that shit up into a ZIP file, host it somewhere, and then link to it somewhere obvious!
There are lot of options - if you're feeling generous, you can use free/low-cost services like Mega or Dropbox or Proton, which have the advantage of being more flexible in how you can arrange things. Or, if you feel like letting someone else worry about the hosting and making some extra scratch to boot, throw it up on Gumroad or Itch or Ejunkie and charge a few bucks for it (or, again, put it up for free if you're feeling generous).
There are a ton of good reasons to do this:
- As a digital artist, you're constantly shoving your work out into the void. If you're popular or lucky, a handful of your works might enjoy long lifespans in the public eye, but most of what you create will recede from prominence after a few days, leaving you feeling like you never made anything at all. The experience of collecting all of your works together into themed or yearly bundles can be a lovely exercise in reminding yourself of everything you've done
- It's also a really nice service to your biggest fans to offer them a genuine archival solution to finding their favorite works of yours! Specific pieces of digital art are EXTREMELY difficult to track down on Twitter or Tumblr or Discord or even Cohost, and even navigating dedicated gallery sites can be time-consuming and frustrating. Plus, what a lovely way for your fans to discover pieces of yours that they might have missed!
- I'm not saying that this decision should be SOLELY financially motivated, but, for real, you are 100% leaving money on the table if you aren't doing this. If you're an artist who supports themselves via crowdfunding, a robust free archive of your collected artworks is a POWERFUL hook for a potential new patron - sites like Patreon and SubscribeStar do MISERABLE jobs of allowing artists to effectively advertise their work, and an archive can pick up a LOT of that slack. Similarly, there really isn't any reason NOT to put everything you drew in, like, 2019 up on Itch and charge 5 bucks for it. I literally spend 20 dollars on Spacey's Gumroad art packs two days ago because I was so delighted to discover that she was offering them (and because she's hands-down one of my favorite Blowjob Illustrators on the entire web)
Again, I want to stress that if you do this, make the archive link PROMINENT - that is to say, easy-to-find, not buried in a Carrd or Linktree or whatever. You're doing this because you want people to see (and potentially pay for) your art, remember! That's it from me! Collect your art!
EDIT: A few examples of this in action:
- Chauvel/FunSexyDB maintains two separate archives for her SFW and NSFW work across Dropbox, Proton, and Mega
- FreeGlass keeps a Gumroad storefront
- Although the focus of this post is on leveraging your existing backlog of art, you can also simply create bespoke art packs and release one or two selected works from the pack as teasers, like RizDraws does with his Gumroad or Diesel does with her Itch
