Tumblr & Fanart 101

a guide to tumblr & the art community | made by gio dellaria | don't know where to start? search my featured tags up by the search bar!

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Welcome to Tumblr!

You've made an account in an age where Tumblr's popularity is on the decline but never fear! I hope this page can become your how-to guide for posting on Tumblr, interacting with fandom culture, and how to break into the art community.

If you have the time, check out this video by Strange Aeons! It explores a lot of what I'm going to talk about on this blog with regard to etiquette, but her channel is also a great place to learn information about Tumblr history, culture, and memes.

Starting a Tumblr blog is almost like having a blank canvas - you can do anything you want with it. You can make your theme as basic or complex as you want! You can even code your own theme (a feature that has become less popular but is still super cool)! Tumblr is a place for you to speak about the things that you love, in a way that feels comfortable to you, without focusing on the people that see your words. You can't see other people's follower counts, only your own, so the hierarchies and influencer culture that exist on many other social media sites isn't really present here. It's akin to screaming into the void and waiting to see if something shouts back.

While there is plenty of Tumblr history and culture that is ingrained into the site, you don't have to understand every shoelace joke or question of "do you love the color of the sky?" to be a Tumblr user. If you want to learn, more power to you! Plus, it feels fun to be in on the joke. If you don't, you can still enjoy Tumblr for what it is - a place to consume content of your favorite content, with people who are just as excited about it as you!

Keep an eye on this blog for more information about how to get started on Tumblr!

[soaked-doors]

my flower’s here

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How to Fanart: AI Art

AI is becoming extremely prevalent in today's society, and especially today's social media. With this exponential rise in usage and visibility of generative AI programs, it's important to be aware of the art community's stance on it if you intend on joining. This goes for many platforms, not just Tumblr, but general social media communities may have more lax views on AI than the artists who post work on them.

There is a wide consensus within the art community on Tumblr that AI art is, for lack of a better word, bad. It's seen as disingenuous, incapable of capturing the same feeling a piece drawn by a human could. What evokes even stronger feelings in the community is the way that AI art is generated. AI clients are trained on images from all across the web, whether the person who created an image wants it to or not. There are ways to keep art from being used in this manner, but websites make it hard to locate these options. Essentially, AI steals the work and ideas from real, human creators to churn out unfeeling images, taking not only their art, but in extreme cases, their jobs as well.

Keep this attitude in mind when interacting with the community. There are a small minority of "artists" who post AI generated art, but they are not able to break into the main community for many reasons, including ones listed above. If you want to support artists with true talent and a passion for the creative process, Tumblr has plenty that you can find!

[maybeallieart]

An embroidery of the Wikipedia page for embroidery.

[oquitbootz]

UNBREAKABLE STRIDE, Jovial Merryment (I hate you so much)

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How to Fanart: Finding Artists

You've made your Tumblr account, but are completely lost and overwhelmed on where to start looking for content? Look no further! I'll give you a few quick and easy ways to find artists you'll love for fandoms you love even more.

1: Search The Tags!

Tags are a great place to start looking for artists to support and pieces to share. You can type anything (appropriate) into the search bar: fandoms, characters, relationships, whatever your heart desires. If you aren't looking for fanart, you can search different mediums, such as watercolor or animation, and find results that way. Once you've hit enter, scroll to your heart's content! Once you find an artist, you can look at their posts for more of what you like or search through their reblogs for other cool artists.

2: Search An Artist!

Say you have an artist from another platform like Twitter/X or Instagram that you're already a fan of. There's a good chance they have some content on Tumblr that they may not post on other sites! Search and see if they have a Tumblr account and look through their content the same way you did from the tags. Another note: if you have a favorite artist for a certain fandom, see if they have a Patreon of Ko-Fi account. These are ways to gain access to exclusive content while monetarily supporting your favorite artists.

3: Look On Trending!

This is a less effective method of searching for art and mostly depends on if a trending topic interests you, but it can still be helpful! Look through the "Trending" section on Tumblr just below the search bar. See if any of the currently trending topics catch your eye. If they do, click on them and start scrolling! It's a tossup as to whether these topics are fandom-related or not, but it's likely to find art in the non-fandom tags anyway.

Have fun searching!

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How to Tumblr: A Dictionary

Here is a nonexhaustive list of terms you might want to know to interact on Tumblr! It doesn't include everything under the sun but sets you up with a pretty good baseline to be able to interact with users and understand some old inside jokes.

Basic Terms

dashboard - Your homepage. Is the first thing you see when you log into your account and displays posts from people you follow.

reblog - Repost.

tags - Hashtags.

text post - A post that is entirely text. Usually short and funny but can be long.

GIF - Formally: Graphics Interchange Format. Informally: a moving picture without sound.

trending - A section of the search page that shows the top 9 most popular tags on Tumblr at the moment.

DMs - Private messages.

ask - A message, anonymous or not, that is sent to a user's inbox. Can be answered in a post.

askbox - The place where asks are sent.

TL;DR - Too Long; Didn't Read. Used to summarize a very long text post.

fandom - A group of people that enjoy a certain piece of media.

fanart - A work of art drawn by someone who is a fan of a certain piece of media depicting characters or settings from that media.

OP - Original Poster.

queue - A system that, when set up, will automatically reblog posts onto your blog for you.

Inside Jokes

Out of Touch Thursday - A clip of the opening of "Lucky Star", a popular anime, set to "Out of Touch" by Hall & Oates.

Ides of March - March 15th, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated. A Tumblr "holiday".

Do You Love the Color of the Sky? - A Tumblr post that is an extremely long graphic with gradients to show the colors of the sky shifting throughout the day/night cycle. Notorious for making users scroll endlessly to reach the end.

None Pizza with Left Beef - A viral meme of a Domino's order that is baked pizza crust with no sauce, no cheese, and sprinklings of ground beef on the left side.

"I like your shoelaces." - An old way that Tumblr users were supposed to identify themselves to suspected fellow Tumblr users in public. The appropriate response is, "Thanks, I stole them from the president."

Dashcon - A failed Tumblr convention that took place in 2014. Most known for the image of an empty convention room with a small ball pit in the middle.

SuperWhoLock - A combination of the Supernatural, Doctor Who, and BBC's Sherlock fandoms that were extremely predominant on Tumblr.

bots - Automated blogs that posted adult content and were notorious for mass following Tumblr users before a purge on said adult content in 2017 slowed this massively.

Mishapocalypse - An April Fool's prank users pulled on the site in 2013. Users changed their profile pictures to the same picture of actor Mischa Collins, who played Castiel on Supernatural.

4/13 - The anniversary of infamous, but extremely popular on Tumblr, webcomic Homestuck.

Hope this helps you use Tumblr a bit better!

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How to Tumblr: Reblogging

Reposting other users' posts is not unique to Tumblr. Most other social media sites have different names for the same thing - you can repost a carousel on your Instagram story, or you can retweet a post on Twitter/X. On Tumblr, this process is called reblogging, and it's fairly easy!

Some Tumblr users only reblog other content onto their blogs, and that is perfectly acceptable. Again, your blog will look like what you want it to look like. If you don't want to create your own posts but still want a place to curate content by others that you love, go for it! Reblogging is a great way to do that.

The reblog icon looks like a small rectangle with two arrows that circle around each other. When you click on it, you will see options to add text directly underneath the OP (original poster) or to add text in the tags. While adding your own new text onto the post isn't a big issue, it isn't as popular these days as adding tags onto a post (click here for more information on tags). It's less common to see this type of communication on an art piece, but more common on a text post like this one.

When you see Tumblr posts on your dashboard (your homepage), you may see these reblogs with comments underneath from different users. For a frame of reference and a bit of fun, here is what old reblogs used to look like on Tumblr:

Super easy to read (not).

While adding your own text in a reblog isn't as common as adding tags, both methods are acceptable to use! Just gauge the situation/post type and see what feels appropriate and true to you.

[lordofmasks]

Rest | Inspired by Goodnight Moon 🥣 prints

[passionpeachy]

moon snail 🌕

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How to Fanart: The Basics

Tumblr is a website that revolves almost entirely around fan culture and fandom. Obviously, fan content can be produced on other social media sites, but Tumblr has built up a reputation in internet spaces by being a place for nerdier interests and passionate fans. This fan culture is still prevalent today! Tumblr is a fantastic place to come to find fanart of that one anime you're hooked on or the book series you literally can't put down.

You can interact with an artist's post like any other post! You can like it, reblog it onto your own page, leave a comment, or even give the artist a follow if you like their work. Don't be afraid to leave tags when you reblog! Most Tumblr users use the tags as a place to comment, screaming enthusiastically about how much they love the work and the art style and the colors.

A couple of notes:

Though this hasn't been a huge problem in recent years, try not to add your own text onto the post when you reblog, otherwise it could be seen as derailing the post. This isn't as big of an issue on a platform like Twitter/X where reposting steals interaction from the artist but just be mindful!

Do NOT repost an artist's work (as in, downloading their image and putting it in a completely separate post) without asking first. A good rule of thumb is to not do it in the first place but always check their policies on use of their work.

I'll be reblogging some super cool pieces onto this page so you can see some examples of interactions in the tags. There are virtually no rules, so don't be embarrassed to enjoy art!

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How to Tumblr: A Quick Note About DMs

While direct messaging other users is a great way to make friends and meet new people on Tumblr who share your interests, it's important to note that it's generally deemed "weird" to start a private conversation without any previous interaction. Tumblr has a long and tumultuous history with bots, and to start a conversation in this way is reminiscent of them. Don't let this stop you from reaching out to people you've followed for a little while and want to know better, though!

if you have a simple question, check the user's ask box. If you don't know what an ask box is, it's a place where people can send questions, anonymous or not, to a user, and they can be answered in a post. See if their inbox is open and maybe pose your question there. Someone else may have the same one!

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How to Tumblr: Tags

Hashtags are common on most social media websites, but interaction on Tumblr seems to revolve around them more than anything else. Here, I'm going to teach you all about them and how to use them in your communication!

First things first, hashtags are shortened to "tags" in the Tumblr lexicon. If you see someone saying, "check the tags", they're referring to the (usually) grey little hashtags underneath a post. These tags serve a multitude of functions and have no need for traditional grammar rules or punctuation. It's not impossible to write a properly formatted sentence, but it is impossible to put commas, since that's how tags are separated. If you type a comma, Tumblr will just begin a new tag.

This image shows off some of the ways you can use tags in your posts! You can use the tags to comment about the original poster (OP) and their work, like the first user does with "#breathtaking art OP". You can use the tags as a way to filter content on your own blog, like the second user does with "#cats". You can even use the tags as a diary and offer your own anecdotes connecting the post to your personal life. The third user does this, talking about their dog and how she acts like a cat in response to an art piece of a cat.

Each of these methods of tagging is valid, and all ways you choose to tag can be as informal as you like! Don't be ashamed to keysmash, swear, or sing praises as loud as you can in the tags. Just keep your comments respectful, and refrain from obvious misdeeds like hate speech or direct attacks on people who have not warranted them.