Best Free Portfolio Sites for Artists and Designers

This site is one of the most respected in business with much more than the ability to create an online portfolio. In fact, your first visit to their first page can be a bit overwhelming. You can search it by art, artists, products, ...

Keywords, tags, and categories are very important here. For a beginner, it can look like a lot at the beginning but when you start working on your profile, resume, and, of course, portfolio, you'll learn on the go, and in about half an hour you'll very likely get the essence of your internal page and the taste of possibilities.

Like any social site, you have an opportunity to interact with other artists. Even more important is to have the ability to expose yourself to potential employers and even sell your artwork. Google is pretty fond of the Artstation and you have a good chance to get some traffic to your art online portfolio from outside of the community as well.

Here is what my resume looks like:

https://www.artstation.com/mihgasper

What I particularly like at Artstation is the option to present each of your works in a bit longer form with a description and even a link to further info if you think it's needed, just like a small and handy blogging site. There are also many free tutorials from all areas related to art and design.

Behance is probably the first name when a designer starts thinking about presenting his or her creations to a wider audience. Behance recently added an option to sell your work too, which makes it even more attractive. The owner of the site is the software giant Adobe who will very likely add other attractive features in the future. Or maybe not, who knows?

I created a profile at Behance as an experiment to see if such an online portfolio really brings you any eyeballs. This is it:

https://www.behance.net/mihgasper

The answer is simple. Behance has a vibrant community and if you are engaged, you'll make contacts with cool people while promoting your work at the same time. On the other hand, it can be a bit time-consuming, just like any social website, I guess. So stay focused on your work and try to spend your less creative minutes on the promotion of your portfolio.

I have to admit I don't really get Coroflot yet. It's very easy to use and it's great to know real people are reviewing your content before everybody can see it on the web. Yet, it seems the community is not as vibrant and engaging as at the Artstation or Behance above.

My profile looks a bit dull, though:

https://www.coroflot.com/mihgasper

The options of customization are, at least with the free account, very limited which is not a deal breaker for me but can be important when you compete for a gig or a position with somebody else, who has more free hands to show his or her creativity.

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While both free portfolio sites above attract artists and designers, Coroflot is more designer- than art-oriented. It regularly posts jobs from the field with nice categorization by professions/positions and locations.

All in all, I can still recommend it. You don't want all your eggs in one basket, right?

While Behance is best known among designers, DeviantArt has been the number one among artists for many years now. If you are looking for the best of the best, you have a very good chance to find them here. At least the ones who are not under long-term contracts yet.

The quality of presented art on DeviantArt is so high a beginner can easily lose self-confidence, so opening a profile here is maybe not the best first step for an inspiring artist with a weak heart. But everybody has to start somewhere and the possibility of learning from the players from the Premiere League should be enough compensation.

I see myself more as a designer and multimedia creator, so I still hesitate to open a profile here. Instead of that, I invite you to check a profile of my friend:

https://www.deviantart.com/jamiehorrors

Who knows? Maybe she'll become one of the big names in the industry.

Like other presented portfolio sites for artists and designers on this page DeviantArt offers several options for participation in the community which is very energetic and communicative. If you believe in your talent or maybe already have something artistic to brag about, this is your chance to conquer the world. Or, at least, find some similar-minded creative people from all over the planet.

Dribbble (often misspelled with a missing b: Dribble) is another great free website for designers (artists are present as well, but the main focus is on design) who can showcase their work, organize them in collections, write some biographical facts and try to make a step further.

This step can be achieved through learning, finding inspiration, connecting with cool people, or finding a generous sponsor (a part-time employer can also be of some help). This is my profile with a few examples:

https://dribbble.com/mihgasper

I like Dribbble for a chance to present each of your creations where you can explain a bit of your working process, so your potential employer can get the feel of how you create and estimate the odds for a successful collaboration. Young designers can also learn a trick or two from the trade by reading accompanying text. To be honest, everybody can always learn something new because art and design are always evolving and there is always a possibility to incorporate new materials, techniques, or tools into existing knowledge.

First of all, the truly final verdict is not possible. The internet is evolving fast, new sites are growing and old ones are going out of order all the time. Second, there are so many websites suitable for portfolio creation, that nobody can't try them all, let alone make a fair comparison. Maybe you noticed, that I only got to letter D?

As far as I tried, Artstation and Dribbble are my favorites for a simple reason: they can work as a kind of mini-blog or mini-site as well. But your expectations and goals may be (and should be) different than mine.

So if you are an artist and/or designer, looking for a great free portfolio site, start here and invest in each of the presented examples for a few hours (not all at once!) to see what works for you and what not. I recommend making a selection of two or three sites and the same number of portfolios because you never know when one will go out of business. Apart from that have your own site and/or blog, where you have more control and freedom about the promotion of your work.