Nearly 300 Artists Have Joined artbase. Thank You.
Two months after the doors opened, artbase is closing in on 300 members. The honest version of how fast that happened, a blunt ask about dailydraw, and why a room this size is still a good one to walk into.
There are nearly 300 of you now.
That is the whole announcement. artbase opened its waitlist on 1 July, took the invite codes off the door on 20 July, and this week the member count is sitting just short of 300. Two months, give or take.
We know 300 is not a large number on the internet. DeviantArt counts members in the tens of millions, and a busy Discord can add 300 people between breakfast and lunch. We are putting the real figure in the headline anyway, because the alternative is one of those growth updates written entirely in percentages, and nobody was ever moved by “up 300% on the quarter” from a starting line of four people and a logo.
The number is not the good part
The gallery is the good part, and we are not going to describe it back to you. You made it. You have seen it.
What is worth saying is that none of the range was arranged. Nobody was recruited to fill a category, there is no style filter at the door, and we have never once put a thumb on the scale about what belongs. So what is on the recent page is simply whoever walked in and whatever they happened to be working on that week. If you have not scrolled it lately, go and do that instead of reading the rest of this. It makes the argument better than we can.
Now the awkward ask: dailydraw
dailydraw is the quietest part of all this, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The rules are in the launch post and they have not changed. What has not happened is volume. The entries that do come in are good, and worth the scroll. There are simply not many of them.
Which is the opportunity, if you want it framed that way.
Every prompt gets its own gallery page, and right now those pages have room on them. Submit something and you are on that day’s page, in the permanent record of that prompt, not competing with two thousand other entries for a spot above the fold. Nothing pushes you down as the day goes on, because there is not enough behind you to do the pushing. A rough sketch done in twenty minutes gets you a page you will still be on in five years.
That will not be true forever. It is true this week. And if the sticking point is the habit rather than the platform, we have made the case for daily prompts elsewhere.
What being here early still buys you
Some of this is simple arithmetic:
- Your work is on the first page of its tags. Not because it is better than everything else. Because there are eleven other things wearing that tag. Tag well and that position is yours to take.
- Names become people. At this scale the same handful of usernames keep appearing in your notifications until they stop being usernames. That is how artist friendships actually start, and it is much harder in a crowd.
- Feedback reaches somebody who can act on it. A bug report gets read by the person who wrote the bug. Make the most of it while the queue is this short.
The flip side: some tags here are still empty. Post something properly niche and you may be first in it for a few weeks. On one of the old giants there is an audience waiting and a hundred thousand pieces to be seen past. Most people use both, and that is a perfectly sensible answer.
Thank you, plainly
To the people who signed up in the first week, when the recent page was thin and there was almost nothing to look at: that was a leap of faith and we noticed.
To everyone leaving real comments on strangers’ work, especially on the pieces that had no likes on them yet. To everyone who has submitted to dailydraw on a day when the prompt was awful and did it anyway. To every person who has sent us a bug report, a feature request or a blunt opinion about something we got wrong: that inbox is read properly, every message of it.
We built the thing. You made it a place.
If you have been meaning to join
Now is a good time, and joining takes about a minute. Head to artbase.au, claim a username while the short ones are still going, and put up five pieces you like. Tag them properly. Leave a comment that could only have been written about that one picture, which is still the fastest way anyone has found to stop being new somewhere. Then do today’s dailydraw, because that page is waiting and it is not full.
If you want the full tour before you commit, the plain explainer covers the features, the pricing and where we stand on AI, and the platform walkthrough covers what it is like to actually have your work here. If you are starting from zero on audience, our guide to your first 100 followers is the practical one.
Three hundred is a number small enough that every one of them is a person: roughly 300 people who decided to hang their work somewhere new. Come and be the next one.
Frequently asked questions
How many members does artbase have?
Just under 300 as of late August 2026. artbase opened its waitlist on 1 July 2026 and removed the invite codes on 20 July, so that is roughly two months of growth. We publish the real figure rather than talking in percentages.
Is artbase free to join?
Yes. Signing up at artbase.au is free and there is no waitlist or invite code. There is an optional paid Pro plan, around five dollars a month and priced in your local currency, but the platform itself stays free to join and use.
What is artbase like at this size?
A new upload lands on the first page of its tags instead of a hundredth page, comments come from people who opened the page to look at art, and the same handful of names turn up often enough to become people you actually know. The trade is that some niches are still thinly populated.
What kind of work do people post on artbase?
All of it. Digital illustration, traditional painting and graphite, photography, pixel art, sculpture and 3D, plus written work: short stories, poetry, serialised fiction and fanfiction. There is no style filter at the door, and the categories describe the medium rather than the look.
Is it worth submitting to dailydraw?
At the moment, yes, for a reason that will not last. Each dailydraw prompt has its own gallery page on artbase, and those pages are not full. An entry lands in the permanent record of that day without competing with thousands of others for a visible position, which is not something a busy prompt community can offer anyone.
Do I need an invite code to join artbase?
No. The invite-only early access period ended on 20 July 2026. Anyone can sign up directly at artbase.au, pick a username and start uploading.