First off, what is DeviantART?
It's a website/community where people get their own page, enabling them to upload photographs, art pieces, and even literature. Everyone has a main page/'profile' which includes various things. On the top of the profile there are tabs which look like this -
- letting the viewer look at all of the work they post and see other things in more detail.
The Tabs -
Profile - The main page.
Gallery - Where all of the work uploaded is kept, the most important part!
Prints - Some people choose to sell prints over DeviantART.
Faves - Work that isn't by the person, but other photographs/art/etc that they've liked.
Journal - Where the artist/photographer lets people know what's going on. Can be used as a mini-blog.
The Gallery
The gallery is undoubtedly the most important part of the page and is where all the work is located. So I'll tackle this first.
It can be pretty daunting and difficult to find what you're looking for when faced with thousands of photographs, so on the left hand side people usually create 'Gallery Folders' which will section up the images/art, enabling easier viewing -
When you find an image you wish to see, clicking on it will take you to the image page. Here will be the image/artwork/writing with some information underneath -
If you click on the image itself when viewing in this mode it will fill the screen and enable you to see it in better/close detail. A handy feature!
You can then either press the arrow keys or the 'next' button to flick through the photos in that section, or go back to the main gallery page to find other images.
Easy!
Back to the Profile!
The main page holds various things, some best images, newest work, an ID, information and a recent journal. So what are these and where are they located?
Everyone's main page is laid out in a slightly different way, but the essentials are there. To keep it simple, I'll print screen aspects of mine which is a basic format.
Under the tabs you'll find some basic information about the artist such as the location, what they specialise in, statistics and some recent activity -
Depending on the amount you pay monthly (or don't in my case!) you get a certain amount of larger photos to display. As my membership is free, I have one, which is located on the left of the page opposite a journal entry -
Here, you can either click on the image to see it larger and in more detail, or click 'More Journal Entries' to read more of the Journal. You can also do this by clicking on the 'Journal' tab at the top.
Many people's pages will have multiple images running down the left hand side, but eventually you'll come across a 'Newest Deviations' section where you can view the most recent work -
Just under the new work will be a 'Browse Gallery' button, which will take you to all the work submitted, which is the same as clicking on the 'Gallery' tab at the top of the page.
Somewhere else on the page will be a 'deviantID' which is simply a photo of the photographer/artist/writer with a bit of information underneath.
Then you'll come across a 'Random Favourites' section, which puts up different work from the 'Faves' tab every time it's viewed. Here will be other people's work -
Somewhere on the page you will also find 'Devious Info' which is some more information about the artist. There will also be an advert section (which you can wisely choose to ignore!)
At the bottom of the page there are 'watchers' and a comment section. Watchers are people who are interested in the work displayed so they 'watch' them to be updated when any new work is added.
So that's DeviantArt! I hope this helped some people to navigate it, it's a very useful site and good to use once you get used to it.
Thanks for looking!
Emily Thomas | ect.images
Contact -
ect.images@gmail.com
Links -
http://rainbow-emily.deviantart.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ectimages/157868977596475
