I feel like I miss out on views because people are looking for yet more digital art streams for some reason, when the equally large community out there who loves traditional art is getting drowned out and difficult to connect to.

Traditional art needs is own category

This is not a mood thing. These are two completely different arts. It's like comparing board games to video games. They are two different things, saying these two are "art", is like saying spaghetti and icecream are both food, yet one we classify as a dessert.

Digital does not have the physical aspect that traditional has. The split also has the upside of assisting with the growth of AI, allowing to differentiate more between the handmade art. Of course we should keep in mind that robots might go for the traditional art in the future, but this does not take away any of the classification we have given it.

Finding a way to keep traditional art from being drowned by digital is going to benefit both types of artists.

It just makes sense, distinguishing between digital art and traditional. Sometimes we have different moods is all.

Traditional artists out here inventing perspective by hand while Twitch is like “best we can do is Art™.”

I find nothing wrong with digital art but to have a place where us traditional artists can be found easier would be so helpful. I have to scroll a lot to even get to any traditional artists in my sight. Having a designated place for handmade physical art would help us with that separation we so desperately need.

I set content preferences to Hide Sexual Themes. When I click on the Art category it's full of anime ***** and furry fetish. It's like when Pools was in IRL. I feel really bad for the traditional artists losing out because of it.

I like Brushforhire’s idea as well because it keeps us together in the sense that everyone is streaming artistic/creative endeavours. And I feel that it is important to acknowledge, again, as many have, that no genre of art/creative design is less than or better than any other. Many artists stream both traditional art and digital art. And many traditional artists can be found enjoying digital art streams and vice versa.

Though I am unsure about if creating sub categories is as easily feasible, at this time, compared to creating separate categories, as from my understanding there are no subcategory divisions on Twitch but in replace tags are used to help viewers find content. But clearly the tags are not working well in these cases.

Many people in this thread have commented the differences between Graphic Design vs. Digital Art or Sculpting vs. Woodworking is also noticeable, so again, a clear message that delineations that are more user intuitive are needed.

But through all the differences, the consensus is the same: not having a clear and easy way to to classify yourself and thus have a clear and easy way for viewers to find you is hampering the community from connecting and also growing, leading to people leaving the platform for other platforms or not even considering Twitch a viable platform at all. But clearly it was a viable art streaming platform in the past, and by solving this one issue can be again.

I wish there was one main Art category, and then subdivided into the different types of art. I cannot tell you how many times people tell me they never even realized artists are on twitch.

My husband & some friends are great traditional artists. It’s sad seeing them struggle live on Twitch due to low viewership, raids etc because the art category is so heavily saturated with digital artists. Traditional Art needs its own category. As does Digital Art/Graphic Design!
The Art community (traditional art)is what introduced me to Twitch. Where I made some amazing friends & then I also became a small streamer.
Give the artists back what they had please & separate the two categories!

I would like to upvote, highlight, or otherwise bring more attention to the comment Tickiwaw made as it hit home. What he shared is how I discovered him and his community and formed friendships that are still strong to this day. His community ignited my growth on Twitch when I first started. That was the case for many artists. It used to be easier to grow as an art streamer than a game streamer because artists took a more collaborative, community approach to help each other grow. That's difficult now because traditional artists are buried by digital art wherein seems to be little variety.

I wanted to comment on this, especially given the recent uptick in interest in my post here.

When myself and many others streamed in the Art category 10ish years ago, it was primarily traditional art. Back then, it was easy to grow a community. Raiding other art streams, especially ones we hadn’t visited before, almost always led to real conversations. Discussing mediums, techniques, sharing socials, and showing each other’s work. While a follow-back was common courtesy, their viewers would often follow too if they liked your art that was displayed on the screen of the person you'd raid.

That’s how many of us mapped our growth. We planned which streams we’d visit, who we’d raid, and even built dedicated scenes in our streaming software specifically to highlight raiders and showcase their artwork. It felt collaborative, constructive, and community driven.

At some point, traditional art streams stopped being the majority in the Art category.

That shift made raiding significantly harder. Traditional artists could easily continue drawing or painting while showcasing a raider’s work, but for many digital artists, their screen is their workspace. Putting up someone else’s art often meant stopping their own work entirely. Over time, that dynamic quietly changed raid culture.

Eventually, raids stopped being met with follows. Communities stopped growing. Streamers who were on a steady upward path, some nearly making a living from streaming alone, saw that momentum disappear. Many of their viewers, often middle-aged or older, slowly drifted away as they struggled to find the kind of daily art streams they once enjoyed.

Art is already a difficult space. Streaming art, creating YouTube videos, and selling work is impossible without a community. Personally, I would only ever sell artwork when people watched me create it or when my viewers could hear my passion. In the end, its not so much about the art, or the artist, but the story of behind the work and its creation. The same was true for dozens of other traditional art streamers who no longer stream at all due to lack of discoverability and community. Even creators with tens of thousands of YouTube subscribers, people who once could succeed on Twitch, now find the Art category largely unusable.

It may not seem obvious from the outside, but traditional artists and digital artists, and the audiences that watch them, tend to be very different. That’s not a negative statement, just an observation from years of experience. When I’ve streamed in Makers & Crafting, it actually felt much closer to the old days of art streaming. But whenever I return to the Art category, I’m reminded that traditional art there has effectively disappeared and with it, my community.

Starting over is hard. Starting over when you’re never seen is harder.

That’s why I strongly believe a dedicated Traditional Art category isn’t just my nostalgia for a different era of twitch, it’s necessary for myself and people like me to exist on the platform.

YES!! as a traditional artist myself, I love supporting and watching other artists create incredible work here on Twitch. I would love to see a category just for them to thrive in. Traditional Art should have be it's own category a long time ago. It's long over due. Let's make it happen!

As someone who bounces back and forth between digital and traditional art, but lean more into traditional art, I think it having separate categories would be beneficial for art streamers. I love both mediums, but can confirm from an earlier comment about people coming into stream when I am doing traditional art and saying that they finally found someone doing something not digital. There is nothing wrong with digital as I have said it's part of my tool kit as an artist, but there are so many amazing traditional artists getting lost in a sea of digital artists.

I strongly believe giving traditional artists their own streaming category, will help us reach an audience that most of the time doesn’t know we exist.

+another to what AchromaticKitten said

Support the arts! Traditional art needs its own space to shine and the art community will continue to support each other and whichever medium we make art in! The art community on Twitch is a fantastic place to be and has long been in need of more room to help it continue to thrive!

THIS HAS BEEN NEEDED FOR A WHILE! MAKE IT HAPPEN!

The most repeated comment in my streams is "finally, I found someone using a pen and paper"
I've been doing this for a fair while and I have never understood why digital art, traditional art, and makers/crafters aren't their own categories.
I watched as twitch created categories for streamers in pools and hot tubs during that phase, created dj's to separate from music and irl from just chatting. But still artists have to sift through mass amounts of vtubers making emotes to find an actual traditional artist trying to create/teach/connect and/or grow. Twitch has a real chance to set a precedence when it comes to traditional art online and it would be a shame to see more new traditional artists turn away from twitch due to being lost in a see of digital art thumbnails.