Whether you’re an up-and-coming artist or a seasoned professional, one of the best investments you can make in your art career is in a personal website with an online portfolio. From traditional pen and paper to digital illustrations, tattoos, animation, and more, check out some smart web design decisions and even more mind-blowing creativity in our latest website feature.
1: Yehuda & Maya Devir, Comic Artists
Bright and interactive, merchandise is centered on the front page, as well as courses and workshops. The portfolio is easily accessed, but letting your shop content speak for you is one amazing perk of selling your own artwork. This husband and wife team’s illustrations have exploded in popularity these last few years, and their site is a perfect example of how to build a brand (and a great website) around your thriving art career.
2: Squidbrains, Illustrations by Jillian Altmeyer
With illustrations this cute, who needs any distractions? This super-simple portfolio features a grid like spread of art on the front page, as well as links to the artist bio, their larger portfolio, Etsy store and Patreon. A different designer might have tried spreading the content across a larger, more complex website, but that would have been a mistake in our opinion. If you’re not at the point where merch sales make up the bulk of your art sales, showing off your beautiful work first and foremost is never a bad way to go.
3: Shadowscapes, The Art of Stephanie Law
There’s so much to compliment here. Beautiful watercolors, loose grid display of recent works with zoom in effect, combination of gallery/portfolio/store as well as artist info and CV. This site integrates their web store into their entire portfolio, with purchase links on each individual piece whenever available. This is a great design move if you’re planning on selling prints or originals on the majority of your works, but those purchase links can get lost if only the occasional piece is available for sale.
4: Danielle Weires, Artist and Illustrator
We love how the page is split between art and artist information, with the bio and CV on the front page. There’s so much gorgeous content here, and the tightly cropped 4×6 thumbnail of each work compliments the clean nature of the digital art style.
http://www.danielleweires.com/
5: Rider Tattoo, Tiffany Rider’s Portfolio
Great portfolio with endless carousel of recently completed tattoos. Structured to present the art first, this site still provides all the hallmarks of a good portfolio: Work, the artist’s biography, their commission information and how to contact them. Check out the clever QR code to easily pay your tattoo deposit. Particularly important for artists who practice any kind of body art like tattoos or piercings, it also includes details like aftercare information and all legal disclaimers.
6: The Art of Matt Doering
Such a great site for a TV animator. The warm yellow background ties the hero image and thumbnails together, and the white sidebar with clean text links is the perfect compromise between featuring fun and engaging art and the professional artist who creates it. As always, extra props for keeping the sidebar in view as the page scrolls. As a professional working on published works, we love the branding and intro around each project page, which does a great job of giving context and cohesion to what the viewer is looking at.
https://mattdoering.portfolio.site/
7: Red Wombat Studio, The Art of Ursula Vernon
Some sites are bursting with content on the front page, but Red Wombat Studios keeps it tight and concise. The cute category graphics next to the full color banner, sparing use of color in an otherwise black and white page, looks like a newspaper feature. Categories are bursting with content, blog section includes plenty of promotion, including book releases, tag lists and a patreon link.
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http://www.redwombatstudio.com/
8: Loish, The Art of Lois Van Baarle
Somewhere between full page hero image and category carousel, this site features a nice mix of up-and-coming publications, professional and rough work and patreon information, all displayed on jaw-dropping artwork and photography. The softly colored logo on a simple sidebar is no less effective for being featured several times already in this article.
9: Sienna Art Studios
With a long homepage bursting with content, Sienna Art Studios isn’t afraid to be nerdy, including youtube videos in their promotion and tons of info about their process. We appreciate the commission request form being right on the front page for easy access, as well as abundant artist information. This site feels full without being crowded, and shows a prolific and talented artist at their best while giving each category their own section and space to shine.
10: The Art of Cody Vrosh
This site smoothly integrates the artist’s many social profiles, and does a great job of inviting viewer participation through categories, shop links, embedded process videos, and a mailing list widget. The watercolor banner is beautiful and compliments the art style nicely, although the smaller text links can get a bit lost in the starry background. This is a solid site for a solidly talented artist, using simple tweaks for a wonderfully personal effect.
