Start with these windows, then let your own numbers take over.
The short answer
In your followers' local time:
- Weekdays: 12–2pm and 7–10pm.
- Weekends: 10am–1pm, and Sunday evening.
- Weakest: late night and before 7am.
Art gets saved, shared and looked at for longer than most posts. The first hour still decides how far it travels, so post when your followers are awake.
By art type
| Art type | Try first | Days | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital art | 12–2pm, 8–10pm | Tue, Wed, Sat | Younger, global audience, online late |
| Photography | 12–2pm, 6–8pm | Mon–Thu | Landscape shots read well in the feed |
| Traditional art | 7–9pm | Wed–Sun | People have time for the caption |
| WIP and process | 7–10pm | Any | Threads do well in the evening |
These are starting points, not data about your audience.
Time zones
Artists pick up followers everywhere. Three ways to handle it:
- Post for your biggest group. Check where replies come from, or X Analytics if you have Premium.
- Post twice. Big pieces again 8–12 hours later, with a new caption.
- Schedule while you sleep. 10am in Tokyo is 9pm in New York.
How to post art on Twitter
- Lead with the full piece. In a multi-image post, the first image gets the most space.
- Check the crop. Two, three and four images get cropped into a grid. Preview on your phone before posting.
- Up to 4 images, 5 MB each, or one GIF up to 15 MB. Sizes: image size guide.
- Add alt text. Describe the piece in a sentence or two.
- One or two hashtags. Join art events like #PortfolioDay when they run.
- Shop link in a reply. Keep the first post about the art.
- Answer replies in the first hour. Conversation spreads a post further than likes.
How often
Three or four posts a week is plenty:
- 1–2 finished pieces
- 1 WIP or process thread
- 1 post sharing other artists
Consistent posting at an OK time beats rare posting at the perfect time.
Schedule it with Statuz
A free CLI for X, Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn. Install it, then:
statuz media add --path ./dragon.png --alt "Ink drawing of a dragon curled around a lighthouse"
statuz posts create --text "New piece: the lighthouse keeper's dragon" --media <media id> --to x --at "wed 12:30pm"Post for another time zone:
statuz posts create --text "Morning, Japan. New piece is up" --media <media id> --to x --at "thu 10am" --timezone Asia/TokyoShare the same piece on Bluesky and Mastodon with --to x --to bluesky --to mastodon. Alt text goes everywhere. Times: Scheduling.
Track your own data
- Post at two different times for two weeks.
- Compare replies, reposts and bookmarks.
- Keep the winner. Test a new slot.
If a piece flops, the timing is rarely the reason. Look at the crop, the first image and the caption first.
More: threads, cross-posting, schedule a tweet.