Online portfolios

I have been very busy lately maintaining a growing array of Online portfolios - all with their own idiosycratic ways of uploading images, editing and maintaining profiles and ranking systems. Most are free and offer a good opportunity for artists to display their work online and have a fairly stable web presence. Even for artists with their own websites such as myself these online portfolios are a great way of generating traffic and reaching an audience that one individual website cannot.

Of course its not just about taking. To get the most of these sites one has to put back in; commenting on other people's work, offering advice and putting in the time to contribute to the general community. One has to remember also that different nationalities have different ideas on what is constructive criticism - I have virtually lynched on Flickr for daring to suggest that a 10 from an American is about the same as a 6 from a Brit! and that a "WOW!!! Fabulous" from an American will translate as a "Not bad" from a Brit and just a "Well done" or "Nice One" from elsewhere!

Here is a list of the online portfoio site I have so far found: Each link links to my profile page (well I would, wouln't I!) But you can get an idea of the range of these sites that are around and the way in which I have varied my profile to fit the style and conditions of each.

Wet Canvas is good place to start I have posted several articles to their forums and have always been impressed by the response. They also have a relatively new Gallery site: Art Agent
My latest membership is to Voodoochilli which will let you upload 7 images to start with and then gives you upload credits for participation in the community - all graphically represented by a series of chillies!

Art Wanted is another new one for me, 3 images a month and a friendly, responsive and widespread membership.

Other sites well worth a visit are: Artist Online Artists Portfolio Artists.org Allintoart and the slightly girly pink Mini Gallery!

Any artist worth their salt will of course sooner or later come across Saatchi Online although to be honest they have now got so big I hardly ever get any visitors to my page - entering the Saatchi Showdown is a laugh but unlikely to make you famous!

I haven't included some of the local online gallery pages such as The Arts Forum or the 1066 gallery

A constantly updated list of this sites can be found on my website links page