Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

Today I'd like to talk to you about Instagram and perhaps ask you for your advice. Over the last two and a half years or so, I've managed to grow my Instagram following to around 1,700. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of said followers are not bots but real actual humans who took the time to set up an account and decided to follow me. Of course every artist on the platform would like to see their following reach into the tens of thousands but 1,700 is not too shabby and seems like progress, especially since I started the year at around 1,500 and I'm still growing.

 

One thing that I find interesting is that this growth continued in spite of the fact that I took an extended break from posting regularly. Call it Instagram fatigue. For a good year and a half I posted Monday to Friday every week. Even when I was on holidays. So far this year there have been many weeks where I only posted twice. The one thing I've kept up is posting new work every Tuesday and Thursday as I have been doing since the beginning of the pandemic. I'm not planning to change the strategy any time soon, but that could happen eventually. 

 
All the social media experts tell me I have to be focussing on reels. You know the short videos that Instagram introduced to compete with TikTok which can be frustrating. It's not that I don't enjoy making videos. In fact some of you may not know that in art school, my major was not painting. In fact I did a double major in drawing and video! I just don't like that I have to make videos to get engagement. After all, I'm all in on painting these days, so why can't the Instagram algorithm just boost my photos of my paintings?

 
The good thing about reels is that I have had some fun making them. Especially the guitar videos that I started doing last year. Some of my favourites being the long form Hendrix songs I did for IGTV (Instagram TV, which was supposed to compete with YouTube, but is now defunct, though you can still find them on my page). But I also made some fun ones last year where I read from a silly book called We Go to the Gallery and from my Art Theory for Beginners book. Not to mention the ones where I hold up one of my paintings and do a silly voice etc.

^{Tom Petty, 11" x 14", oil on canvas, 2022.}
 
But lately I've been painting more famous musicians and using Instagram's green screen to play guitar solos in front of them, thereby sparing everyone from my singing! Anyway, some of the reels have gotten good engagement and some haven't. It seems to be a crap shoot. Just like regular photo posts.

 

So this week I've decided to try something different with the Reel I made using this brand new painting of the late-great Tom Petty as a green screen. The plan is to introduce this painting to world using the Reel instead of the usual static photo. Will it get me extra engagement? We shall see… In the meantime, I'll ask that you go to Instagram (or Facebook if you don't have it) and check it out there. 

 
But what I'd like to ask you dear readers, is what kind of reels would you like to see? A friend of mine told me he thinks the guitar videos are great because they show another side of me, one people couldn't know about and might not expect. But maybe you like the other ones? Or maybe you have an idea for something unique? Please comment here or on Instagram or Facebook @chrissimoniteart.