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Getting the Most out of dA: GroupsGroups are a platform on deviantART which allow you to share your art - what it is primarily used for. Immediately, once your art is accepted into the Gallery, your art is sent to the message centres of many members of that particular group, gaining you instant and wider exposure. However, to really enhance your deviantART experience, and to get the most out of deviantART, +Groups shouldn't, and aren't, simply used for that.
There are many roles you can play within a group. By taking up a role, you immediately get more out of deviantART than if you had not done so.
Let's start with being a...
Member
Not only do you get the chance to submit your art to the group, as a Member, you also

the many happenings within the group too. This means you can read about the immediate happenings as soon as they are launched through the group, such as contests, projects and more in between. As a member, seizing the

Introducing PE week: Getting the Most out of dAThis week marks the first ever Project Educate week on the topic of "Getting the most out of dA"! For this week I collected a small group of experts on the deviantART community and positive contribution. Together we will present you with articles and happenings, to inspire you and give you an overview of how you can contribute to the deviantART community.
From Monday to Saturday, each day will focus on a different topic. Topics will be introduced in an informative article. Then we'll go into it more in depth with you through interviews with gurus on the subject or through events where you get to experience the fun of contributing.
Then on Sunday we'll recap the entire week not only in a summary of articles but also in a chat event!

Please make sure you're watching #projecteducate to see all our articles and events

Topics to be covered
Commenting
Monday 4th
^3wyl
Running Groups
Tuesday 5th
:dev3wyl

PE: dA help - in English or Other LanguagesOn a big site like deviantART you're no doubt going to come across something you have a question about or just don't quite understand. There are many channels you can use to find the answers to various types of questions - such as the +faq, the *welcome tour, the deviantART Tutorials category and the :#help: chatroom. How do you know which to use?
The best point to start with any question or problem related to dA is the official Need Help? thread. It lists all official help channels and what they can be used for. In this article we focus on the +faq - as well as places to find dA information in many other languages! Let's start with English.
English - The FAQ
The FAQ (a common abbreviation for Frequently Asked Questions) c

PE: Organizing Projects and ContestsProjects and Contests are amazing ways to get more involved in the community and branch out to the community, be it that you are running the project or contest or that you are simply taking part in it or even helping out with it in any way. Below will detail some of the ways to better get involved with Projects and Contests.
Interview with ^Aeirmid
^Aeirmid is well known within our community for running fun and out of the box Projects and Contests. Jade heads up #Arts-and-Health, ran the #Halloween-HQ contest this past Halloween, did a month long #projecteducate on Photomanipulation, and has ran several other successful contests and projects just within the past year. As such I felt she was the perfect person to interview in this article.
How can members get their projects/contest seen so that more people will get involved with them?
OK my first piece of advice would be to partner with the

PE Daily Deviations- Presentation of your workHello all!

Well we’ve had a fascinating week so far; a week which hopefully has provided some insight not only to the process of DD selection but helped you understand what we look for in DDs as CVs. As we draw to the end of this week, I bring you an article which will whet your Saturday with thoughts that don’t just apply to the DD feature, but something which should be a consideration to everything you submit to dA. I am talking about deviation presentation.
Why is Presentation important?
Art isn’t always about just being “creative”. There are techniques and skills which develop over time which contribute to the quality of the work you produce and alongside this comes a developed understanding of good presentation.
Good presentation could be anything from cropping a photograph, to spell checking your literature. These are common sense things that in the rush of wanting to show off your creativity can sometimes be

PE Art Features and Daily DeviationsDaily Deviations:
As per :faq61:, The Daily Deviation is a daily feature chosen from galleries here on deviantART.
A small assortment of submissions are chosen each day by a select group of staff/volunteer members who wish to showcase an image which they found impressive or otherwise interesting enough to deserve being brought to the attention of the community-at-large.
Benefits of suggesting Daily Deviations:
helping artists gain more exposure
deviantART is such a large website with many members, often great art can fall through the cracks and go unnoticed as a result. Daily Deviations are usually a wonderful way to put a bit of a spotlight on a particular piece or artist. Often people like to focus on the lesser known artists, though it may be worth noting that even deviations uploaded by popular artists can at times use more exposure as well

PE Daily Deviations: What if...?
Hello everyone!

After news articles explaining 'The Myth and the Legend' of the Daily Deviations, how to suggest them, tolerance towards Daily Deviations, the negativity, the focus on the notes and what it actually is, this article tackle the 'What if...?' scenarios t

PE: Daily Deviations - The Myth and the LegendDaily Deviations, or DDs . . . for some deviants, receiving one is the epitome of awesomesauce in the deviantART world. For others, they are a nice way to show off the work of lesser-known artists. Still others treat them as a special way to bring attention to great art that exemplifies works being done by a particular gallery or community.
Perhaps because there are so many different ways of conceptualizing DDs, there are also many myths and misconceptions. I would like to address some of those myths by responding to the ones most frequently heard. Please note that these opinions are mine and reflect my experiences with the photomanipulation community, but perhaps they will be informative nevertheless.
Myth 1: DDs should always be perfect.
To many of us, the ideal Daily Deviation goes to an artist with amazing talent whose work draws you in and makes you think, "Wow, everyone needs to see this!" A DD should move you, inspire you, and provoke you to think, b

PE: The power of contextA picture is indeed "worth a thousand words", a complex idea can be conveyed with a single still image. This quote also characterizes one of the main goals of visualizations, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly. In our perception of artworks we see every day, some get closer to our hearts than others. Imagine a painting, strong and powerful, technique showing an experienced, steady hand, needing nothing but a pair of eyes to enter one's sensitive soul. Are you satisfied with what you see? I wouldn't count on that, but I would be quite sure that after a while your head fills with numerous questions.
On the contrary, your favorite artist publishes their recent work and you, as always, immediately love it. If, however, you would allow your mind a little exercise, you could clearly see that if this work was shown to you at random, under different circumstances and you would not know the author, hardly would it catch your interest for a second.

PE: Getting the Most out of dA: Chat and ForumsThe Forums and the Chatrooms, collectively known as the dAmn (deviantART Message Network), are home to many kinds of discussion. In this article we'll briefly go over the different forums and chatrooms there are, with some specific attention to those that are helpful for you as deviant who wants to contribute to the community.

+forum
First, the forum are not the place to go ask for help or report a problem with deviantART - but they do have the handy Need HELP? thread which tells you exactly where to go with your question.
So if not that, then what are the forums for? Let's break it down down down

to the subcategories!

Tip: before making a thread, always have a look not only at the Forum Posting Guidelines to the top, but also at other recent threads to see what the forum is for and what response you can expect.
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PE: Tolerance Towards Daily DeviationsIf you're like me, one of the first things you do every morning is turn on the computer to check the DDs for the day, if you make this a habit sooner or later you'll see something featured that you won't like at all, making you spill your morning coffee all over the screen.

Oh the crime! That poor coffee going to waste.
Before you hit the Caps Lock button and begin an essay about the drop of quality of DDs, stop. Take a deep breath, maybe walk around for a bit to cool down, and think about what you're going to do. To begin with, complaining about the DD leaving a comment is extremely disrespectful for the artist because most of the time, they didn't even ask to be featured. Instead, take a moment to consider why was it picked, DDs are chosen for far more than just being visually attractive, as the article Daily Deviations - The Myth and the Legend explained; we often look f

PE: Stock, Resources and deviantART RelatedStock & Resources
I see Stock & Resources as a category of art on deviantART where the entire focus is on helping others and providing them with what they need. This helps artists of any medium! Photomanipulators for example rely heavily on the stock photos they find here. If you draw or paint, digitally or traditionally, many stock photos can be hugely helpful as reference, as can line art and textures. There's literature templates, fonts, fractal and vector resources, designs & patterns for artisans and crafters.. and then there's tutorials for any kind of art, and about deviantART itself.
So one great way to contribute something to the community and your fellow artists is to provide such resources!
We will not go into this in depth as it has its own Community Volunteers and Project Educate weeks that should help you get started!

Informative articles:
An

It's All About Presentation (Mostly)As more and more people start taking pictures of their nether regions on their iphones or posing myspace style in front of their HTC's - the competitive world of getting a Daily Deviation gets just that much harder...

I kid. But... daily, I am bombarded with awesome suggestions (which I love) and I'm not complaining about. But there has to be a criteria of sorts, that sets an image above the rest. Here are a few things I look for that you might not have noticed before... The first thing I look at when I stumble across an image or view a suggestion from somebody, is how the artist has presented their work to the deviantART Community.
Title
Your image isn't everything. Not anymore. In the past I have given Daily Deviations to pieces with titles that are a combination of random letters and numbers, or that are very obviously still the source file title - or that tends to be just a keyboard mash-up. Everyday CVs are sent many many notes suggesting pieces o

PE: A Guide To Vexel Art

Welcome
Welcome to Vexel Art week with Project Educate! I am ^TheLastHuzzah, your host for the week. Today I am introducing you to Vexel Art, and digging nice and deep to aid the understanding of this fantastic media. I’m more than happy to answer any questions you may have, so if anything confuses you or you’d like clarification, please don’t hesitate to comment!

Introduction
Vexel Art takes a great deal of time, patience and skill, contrary to public opinion. This misunderstanding has arisen because, sadly, it is often (incorrectly) said that vexel art is simply tracing a posterized photograph. While I do agree that this is a way that many people start off in the media, and a small number of people continue in it, vexelling is a form of drawing, in the same way as any other media. The vexel artist may sketch out an idea, and then work using the pen tool to digi

PE: Power of PerspectivePE: Power of Perspective
Perspective is the angle and depth of a piece of art. Changing perspective allows for drastic differences. There is more than one kind of perspective, and all of them allow for more dynamic pieces of art if used correctly.
There are three common choices, and these are explained later.
Usually perspective deals with how close things appear, and correctly rendering perspective adds depth to an image and increases the impact of the composition.
One Point Perspective
One point perspective is where there is one vanishing point in a piece. . A vanishing point is essentially the in-the-distance-until-you-can'
t-see anymore point.
You see this perspective often, images of roads, or landscape often have one point perspective.

Examples of one point perspective:
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Getting the Most out of dA: Commenting

Mon Feb 4, 2013, 2:33 PM

Getting the Most out of dA

Usually, when you read something involving 'Commenting', you think of deviations and the commenting platform that allows other members of the community to voice their thoughts and opinions on the art shown. However, what is pretty evident, and something that most of us may forget, is that deviantART runs on the ability to give and get comments, be it on pieces of artwork, our profile pages, +forums, and everywhere else in between.

In a sense, without the ability to give and get comments, deviantART wouldn't be much of a website, much less #1 of online art communities around. Comments are not solely the cause of what makes deviantART what it is, but it has a huge impact on a lot of things. By giving and getting comments, not only do we interact with other members to really make this a community, we also have the ability to get our voices heard.

It's quite an odd concept with us all facing screens, typing out our thoughts and opinions, but one thing we shouldn't forget is that comments are our clearest form of communication on this website, something we shouldn't take lightly. We get out what we put in, and this is something that applies to deviantART. Whenever we put in the time to give a comment to someone, whether that is on a deviation, as a reply, or something else entirely, we often get something from that. Perhaps we get more knowledge, a conversation, or even friendship that may lead to something more.

By commenting, we make a difference.

I don't want to limit the use of commenting to deviations only, though they certainly deserve some recognition. Often, there is the case of the 'fave-and-run' where people just

your art without commenting (for all sorts of reasons). Other times, people leave short comments of 'Cool!' or 'Nice stuff!', which, as I'm sure you'll all agree, is nice and all, but isn't that useful. So deviations themselves deserve to receive more constructive comments. It doesn't matter how polished the artwork is, or how unfinished it is, we all deserve and need comments to help us progress, as many more minds are better than one.

Comments shouldn't be limited to just deviations. We should also make the effort to reach out using different platforms, different settings, on deviantART. This can be our Journals, Polls, +forum, and countless more. By constantly putting ourselves out through our comments, we begin to get the most out of what deviantART has to offer us. We utilise the many features deviantART has, and we build upon it to make it our own.

To illustrate this with an example, if you uploaded deviations and didn't reach out to others through comments, didn't comment on other pieces of artwork, or comment anywhere else, it's likely that you'll be sitting in your corner for a very long time before someone passes by and sees you're alive. Maybe you'll get lucky with the other features available on dA, like +Groups, but, at the end of the day, without communicating with others, you wouldn't receive much attention. It's likely you wouldn't make friends here, and you probably wouldn't even stay long on this site.

Friendships are built on top of the foundation of first comments. Other advantages can also include improvement on one's art, getting your opinions heard and generally being seen by the community, getting attention and exposure as a person and an artist. However, for all of that to happen, we have to make the first step first to lay down the platform for others to join us.

Some helpful articles:

...and a challenge!

For all those that complete it, you'll get your art featured in a news article at the end of this week.

Give one constructive comment on a deviation by someone you do not know!

The challenge is simple enough! Really spend time and effort on it, using the tips from the articles above if needs be. After you have done so, give us the link here in a reply to this blog.

Thank you all for reading!

^3wyl, posting on behalf of the "Getting the most out of dA" PE Team; ^3wyl | ^Astralseed | $namenotrequired

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Getting the Most out of dA: Commentingby ^3wyl

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~ItsCursorBby May 13, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Just something I wanted to point out about "fave-and-run"...I myself do that a lot only because I'm in a lot of groups and don't like deleting the deviation stacks in my messages without going through them and looking at the pictures. I'll see a picture I like and drag it into the relevant collection(s), but I don't always have time to go to each individual one and leave a comment.

^3wyl May 14, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

That's understandable. A lot of the time it's a matter of time.

~KrisColey86 Feb 14, 2013

Great article! I really don't actually know anyone here so this was a really good read for me. I have been a member for awhile but am still pretty new to how this community operates. I vow to not just fave and run! lol, I want to comment more often and here is where I start : [link]

^3wyl Feb 14, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Thank you!

Ah.. I recommend joining in some groups and getting stuck in!

~Grasschamp Feb 11, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

I will have to try to follow some of these! I do try to give as much help as possible, but sometimes I fall short of giving great tips.

^3wyl Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Nah, it's alright! We can't treat it like you'll be on top of it all of the time, even if you wanted it to be like that. Life is full of ups and downs, and this is the same.

~Grasschamp Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

True. I just want to try to help out as much as I can.

^3wyl Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

That's pretty admirable.

=dienutza Feb 11, 2013

This was the best article I've read today. Not that I wouldn't already know all of these, but the layout of the ideas and the short/simple but great content is effective. Thanks for sharing!

^3wyl Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Thank you very much!

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