Edit: thank you for all information, it is really helpful 💖 I will check out pixelfed (.art) and go from there, maybe later setting up something “at home” ! Thanks again !!!

Hello !

I just got asked for a link to my paintings, and well I don’t have an art portfolio online and after trying some free ones out, I haven’t found anything nice (ease if useno nag-ware) so I thought of Devianart where lits of good pixel artists hanged around some ten years ago …

But I have heard Devianart is no longer recommended or the goto place for your portfolio, is that so (or not ofc!) and if, do you have any recommendations for a free online portfolio? Say 30-40 paintings tops.

I’m thinking about setting up something myself so self hosting (FOSS) recommendations are greatly appreciated too!

Cheers!

  • SavvyWolfEnglish
    16•6 months ago

    DeviantArt has been declining over the past few years due to controversial design changes and, more recently, a push for genAI garbage.

    A lot of artists I’ve seen have recently been going to https://cara.app/ , although it’s relatively new and it’s unclear if it will last.

    If you want something ActivityPub, you can also consider finding/hosting a PixelFed instance.

    • @Grimy
      5•6 months ago

      Cara has it in their terms of service that they gain the shared copyright of anything posted on their website. Nothing in their terms of service says they can’t open a store and sell prints or even sell the data to an AI company.

      Cara is literally one of the worse places for artists.

      • SavvyWolfEnglish
        6•6 months ago

        Tos: https://blog.cara.app/terms

        The closest thing I can find is the following:

        The Cara Site and all works of art (“Art”) and/or other user generated content (including without limitation commentary, images, third-party links, and similar content and/or works) (collectively the “Art And Other User Generated Content”), text, data, and other materials contained in the Cara Site are copyrighted unless otherwise noted and are the property of Cara and/or the individual artist who created any individual piece of Art And Other User Generated Content (the “Artist”). No such materials may be copied, reproduced, republished, modified or used in any way except as provided in these Terms and Conditions.

        Which doesn’t actually grant any copyright; it just explicitly states that the artist remains the copyright holder.

        There seems to be a weird hateboner on Instagram for Cara, for unsurprising reasons.

        • @Grimy
          2•6 months ago

          are copyrighted unless otherwise noted and are the property of Cara and/or the individual artist

          The hateboner is justified. For all it’s faults, instagram explicitly says it doesn’t own any of the pictures and only has a license to display which the user can revoke at anytime.

          Deviant art has this in it’s TOS:

          DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to DeviantArt (Your Content).

          It might be due to plain incompetence and not malice but their TOS lets them do a lot more than most platforms.

          • SavvyWolfEnglish
            1•6 months ago

            The terms of service explicitly say that art remains copyright of the artist. Where are you reading that suggests that they’ve granted themselves extra rights?

            I guess you could interpret “are the property of Cara and/or the individual artist” to mean “are the property of either Cara and/or the individual artist at Cara’s discretion”, but that’s such a stretch that I can’t see a judge accepting it.

            • @Grimy
              1•6 months ago

              I misspoke in my first comment. It’s vague on if copyrights are shared but it does explicitly say it gains ownership.

              In any case, this issue has been brought up and they haven’t fixed it. Every other platforms makes it very clear who has ownership of what. There’s too much room for abuse and its either a grift or incompetence and with all the other problems with the platform, it’s not a good look.

              Federated platforms are popping up for this kind of thing, better to wait imo.

      • @TheFeatureCreatureEnglish
        6•6 months ago

        It also has rapidly-ballooning expenses with basically no income model other than a donation link.

        I want a decent new art platform as much as everyone else but I’m not moving my entire portfolio over to a new service that, honestly, looks like it’ll be dead in 6-12 months.

        • @[email protected]
          2•6 months ago

          I want a decent new art platform as much as everyone else but I’m not moving my entire portfolio over to a new service that, honestly, looks like it’ll be dead in 6-12 months.

          It might be worth self-hosting your own website.

          • @Grimy
            2•6 months ago

            This is really the best option. It’s incredibly easy these days and let’s them incorporate an e-shop later.

            Although a lot of these platforms are about getting exposure as well.

      • Rin
        3•6 months ago

        What are the terms that say that? I just want to be sure because every few years I see uproar over misinterpretations of some social site’s terms of service saying “we have the right to modify and redistribute your work”, when all it means is that they can host and make slight modifications to the files you post.

        • @Grimy
          2•6 months ago

          Their TOS isnt very long, a user linked it above.

          Here’s the abridged part that is of interest:

          (Everything on the website including user generated content) are copyrighted unless otherwise noted and are the property of Cara and/or the individual artist

    • @[email protected]
      3•6 months ago

      Yep, after 18 years on dA, I closed my account there yesterday.

      I had about 2000 photos or so, but a year ago I got too pissed off at how slow and annoying it was to navigate, so I set up an index page on a webhost and use digiKam to create albums.

      I update the index page in HTML/CSS and link to the albums.

      The albums does have some javascript, that is to enable arrowkey navigation, else it is just pure HTML and CSS, and it is blazingly fast.