Devianart.com

DeviantArt is a well known, popular artist's community which has been running since 2000. The website is designed to help anyone who enjoys art, regardless of their ability, to post up their work for criticism and to take part in art related activities. There are hundreds of thousands of members on the site who regularly visit it and view its pages.

Joining deviantArt is simple and can be done by anyone who has an email address to confirm that they have joined. Users sometimes create multiple accounts for different things such as one for their main art, one for stock photos and one which may be a club or fan page. Someone who has joined deviantArt is mostly referred to as a deviant and can submit work into one of the many different art categories by choosing to submit a deviation. Each user page has a journal, shows recent and featured deviations, any favourites the artist has, devious information on the deviant, people who watch the deviant and any comments that have been made on the deviant's homepage.

There are two main types of users, unsubscribed and subscribed. Unsubscribed members have limited features, cannot edit their pages as much and will have less superior browsing facilities as well as restrictions on how they can sell prints on the website. Subscribed users can edit their journals to look different using CSS, which is a type of scripting language, can browse more easily and look back further in the deviantArt archives, and have access to a lot more features for their own page.

Deviation is the name for the work submitted by an artist on the site. This process has been made a lot simpler over the years and now the category system has been streamlined to help you find out the best place for your work. You upload artwork from your computer and can write comments about your work, define whether it is for a mature audience or not, and select a few other features such as whether other users can display your art in their deviantArt journals etc.

Each deviation can receive comments from other members detailing whether they like the piece or not and what could be improved about it. It is hard to get constructive criticism sometimes unless you specifically ask for it, but when it is given it can help you to improve your art style a lot more.

Deviants can favourite a piece of work that they especially like and this is stored in a favourite's folder on their main page. Each deviant will have a statistics page telling them how many people added their work to their favourites and how many page views they have had.

You can sell prints of your artwork through the site regardless of whether you are a subscribed or unsubscribed member. This is handy for people trying to sell their work online as their work is more likely to find buyers on the site.

Some deviants take commissions and will detail the information in a journal. It is always a good idea to check with the deviant about what their prices are, what they will draw and how long it will take to do. It varies between artists.

There are also fan clubs and general clubs set up across the site for various games, cartoons and hobbies etc which are free to join and run club competitions and such on a regular basis.

Overall, deviantArt is a really friendly art community and is easy to understand. The people there are really nice and helpful to newcomers. There can be some drama over art theft and nasty comments, but this doesn't happen too often and is usually sorted out swiftly by the admin teams if you contact them about any issues. The site is fun and the feeling of belonging to a bustling community is great. A good site for anyone interested in improving their art and seeing what others can do.