Curious on popularity/fanbase expansion art wise?

Soo first time posting on the forums but I really want community input and I figure that this would be one of the better places to do it (Tumblr isn’t all that helpful critique wise tbh.)
 
Anyways my question or more-so my inquiry is how someone like me who has over 600 Tumblr followers, 382 FA watchers, and 249 Inkbunny watchers. I’ve experimented with drawing less of my OCs (Still love them though and enjoy drawing them a lot.) and even started trying to get more fan involvement by letting them suggest ideas but yet I still get overshadowed by “horse famous” artists so my stuff rarely gets seen.
 
Any tips or suggestions? Even if it’s good critique on how to improve myself.

@Lunar_Nobis
 
Hello there.  
It’s perfectly good and friendly place for mlp-artists IMO. I know I can be wrong.
 
And followers/watchers/faves have nothing to do with how good you’re at drawing.  
It’s more based on your popularity and popularity of what you’ve chosen to draw.  
BUT of course quality artwork can be expected to receive much more attention than… not so good arts.
 
If you ask about yourself then I can tell that you can work more on shading and anatomical correctness, perspective too.  
You can compare yourself to the best artists who specialize in anthro ponies if flaws in your works are not too obvious to you.  
Also Derpibooru users don’t like Original Characters very much (“OC” and “OC only” tag for a reason).  
Of course, there’s no offense in my words. Some people can’t stand the critique so I’m saying that just in case.

@Stooped_hooy  
That’s actually fairly helpful to hear, I’ve been doing my best to attend streams and even got a few pieces of advice from some artists.
 
And I can tell how much they don’t like OCs (Except for maybe my milf pony, users tend to make an exception for her heh.) the upvote to downvote ratio shows it. But like I said it is something I enjoy drawing and I’ve been busting my butt to always improve my work.
 
Thanks again for replying though, any and all input is always appreciated.

There are plenty of people who like OCs, myself included.
 
Popularity comes with productivity. The more you draw, the more chances there are for people to notice you, and thus the more followers you can gain. Though really, you should focus on drawing what you enjoy drawing and what makes you happy, not what makes you the most popular.

@Joey  
Very true, I think it’s just a part of me that wants the attention because of mainly being stuck in the shadows of others my whole life.
 
But thank you for the input though, I’ll do my best to keep going and improving.

@Joey
 
Yeah, I just meant that canon characters will receive more upvotes and stuff. It’s not like everyone hate ’em :D

@Lunar_Nobis  
I think you’re doing pretty well (you draw some sexy stuff), just keep drawing and improving!

It depends; some artists draw more OCs than canon characters and vise-versa.

idk about you, but things arent working for me here. I tried to be productive, creative but so far not many people noticed me much. Probably cuz im not a NSFW artist.

@Lunar_Nobis  
Your quality’s already good, well above average, and I think Stooped_hooy gave a better critique of how you could improve technically than I could give you.
 
The only thing I’d add is that your pictures could use more of a story to each one. A lot of your work is a scene or a pose, done technically well. But there’s little “meaning” behind most of them that can draw the audience in and make them care. Not in all of them though. In other cases, like your recent Valentine’s picture of Cadance, or Frozen Pop taking a selfie in the mirror, there’s more going on that’s interesting. It’s still just a single static image, but there’s clearly more going on around the picture, in imaginary space offscreen, or nearby in time. It’s not in the picture, but it feels like it’s there. It gives you something to think about. It’s more art. And those also tend to be more highly rated than your average. I don’t think that’s coincidence.

I’m sure everyone has said everything already, but I will share my opion.
 
Your artwork is above average and should get attention, but not the best. Your anatomy feels sloppy in places sometimes and the coloring feels simple.
 
I think you have a lot of room for improvement. You need to look at these “horse famous” artists and see the differences between your art and theirs in an artistic sense, like anatomy, lineart, coloring, shading, highlighting, detail, ect…
 
Basically I think you need to set your sights higher.

I appreciate most of the opinions here and I’ve taken a few of them into account. I’ve been getting some help on the side in terms of things like anatomy and posing from peeps in a discord group but all in all I’m happy with progress soo far.

Basically what abzde said. To sum it up, of course they say the score is not important, still I think, it’s a good indicator and coupled with critique and how to do it better (in their(!) opinion, they’re the audience and they will tell you why they haven’t voted your pic up - if there is any) it’s worth gold. They won’t give you accurate suggestions, since most of them are no artists, but that’s something to work with.
 
For me, I gave up to gain more points. I rather look at horse famous artist’s pics wondering and facepalming from time to time (all 3-5 weeks or so) how they got a very high score or a three-day-scoring with that crappy anatomy or no shading or some other unappealing things.  
I can’t call myself a top artist, but these are the moments, when you can rightfully say: Even I could’ve done this better! Snobbish attitude, yes. At least I don’t have to agonize what I did wrong again after the last NSFW pics just reached between 70 and 140 while others reach 200 to 500 in the same time. Only leads you to more concerns and that results in pictures that suffer from quality.

@bluemeganium  
I absolutely love how you draw sexy, beautiful background ponies though - never change!

Nope. Won’t change. I keep develop myself with what I already achieved. Totally worth it. Much more better than just gaining points and agonizing. :P