A Guide to Surviving DeviantArt as a Newbie

Ok. So you’ve taken your sketchpad and you’ve made a nice little sketch in your sketchpad from art class and you think you have what it takes to become an artist. Or, your doodle in math class evolved into an elaborate mess that seems interesting enough that someone on the internet might want to take a look. Perhaps your art teacher (or math teacher) (or chemistry teacher) (or therapist) thinks you’ve made a wonderful piece of artwork and you want to boast about it somewhere. Your mind jumps to various places… Tumblr, Reddit, Myspace… no, the one place that people expect professional and budding artists to be is DeviantArt, and so take your first newborn gasp of DeviantAir and start life anew as a DeviantArtist. Whoopie!

You submit your first piece of art, and wait for the views to roll in. How many will you get? Ten? Twenty? Two-thousand six-hundred and fifty four? A week later and you’re still sitting at three views, all of which probably belong to you as you refresh the page over and over. What went wrong? Why aren’t you popular?

It could be one of several reasons, really. We’ll start with your artwork. It could be that you’re just not really all that good. Don’t stop drawing – oh dear god no keep drawing and learning and practicing – but recognize that you have ways to go. Many people, including myself, didn’t know that we sucked at first. Don’t worry, you’ll get better. Hopefully.

It might be that you haven’t properly added tags. Make sure you know what kinds of things you should be tagging so that you can get the most exposure. If you’ve got an umbrella in the picture, make sure you tag ‘rain’ and ‘storm’ and ‘wind’. Just don’t tag things that have nothing to do with you. That’s annoying.

Last, if you’re immediately looking for popularity, you’ve got this whole DeviantArt thing wrong. You don’t get popularity. You earn it. There are people that have been on for over ten years and aren’t popular. There are people who’ve been on for a couple and get hundreds of views a day. Instead, look to improve yourself and naturally get more views.

Once you’ve recognized the problem, you’ve aged up to an infant. Congratulations! Browse DeviantArt a bit, and scroll through other peoples’ galleries. Note the kinds of comments you see, number of views, date uploaded… oh wait – what’s this? Groups?

That’s right. DeviantArt has a Groups features that lets you submit artwork directly into the inboxes of thousands (or handfuls) of deviants at once. All groups are created equal, but some are more equal than others (boom, literary joke). You’ll notice that fan groups have thousands of watchers, so that’s a good way to get started on getting some views.

But be warned! If your inbox was flooded every day with garbage, what would you do? Leave/block that group. People do that. I do that. Groups with lots of bad art uploaded to it get blocked. I don’t care how much I love that fandom, if all that I see is bad art, I’d rather not see anything at all. So compare your work with the ‘average’. It may hurt (have a band-aid) but seriously consider your level of skill to others. Maybe it isn’t quite time to start submitting here.

The alternative are groups like ProjectComment. They’ll ask that you comment on some other people’s work, and then you can submit your own to be critiqued by others. You’re almost guaranteed to hear from people that know the trade much better than you, and hear what they have to say. Not only are you exposing your work – you’re also getting feedback for it. Two birds with one stone.

Alright. Now, you’ve started uploading more work and you’ve found a group or two that you normally submit to. But you’re still not getting the traffic that you wanted originally. You simmer at six or seven pageviews per day, which is an improvement over three a week, but you want more. Ah, my little toddler, now is the time to wander the isles of fan art.

The word popular means ‘of the people’. So, if you want to be popular, you need art ‘of the people’. You need to make art not for yourself, but for others. This is a slippery slope to depression, so steel up beforehand and know what kinds of hell you’re throwing yourself into. It’s a surefire way to get popular, fast, but like quicksand, you need to have a method of pulling yourself out just before you get devoured. Either that, or bring scuba gear.

Jump on a new, trending bandwagon that you can see lasting for at least a couple of years. You’ll probably out-grow it soon, but find one that you like. This could be a television show, a webseries, a comic, a cartoon, a movie – anything. In fact, if you find a good one, it doesn’t have to be new. Old but popular things may suit you better, and that’s totally fine. Just find a wagon and get in it.

Now, spit out all kinds of work related to that fandom. Submit it to all sorts of groups. Learn to search for groups with the most watchers, and submit exclusively to them. Again, if your skill isn’t quite good enough, maybe you should be giving it a couple of months of practice first before you engage in this step. Pump out work quickly – prepare yourself to create at least one piece of art every week, just to keep people interested in you.

With practice comes perfect; you’re incredibly far away from that right now, but hey, you’re trying. You’ve bumped your pageviews to average a nice solid thirty a day, and you start seeing comments from the same people. Congratulations, teen! You now have some loyal fans. These are people that are in the same fandom, but exist on DeviantArt almost solely to find cool art. Reply to their comments, make’m happy. That’s at least one +fav guaranteed for you.

But like all teens, you want to break out of your shell. “I am bigger than this!” you say. “I have more potential!” Sure you do, little buddy, but it might not be time to leave the nest (that you built) just yet. Now is your chance to experiment. With every group, the chemistry differs. Some groups are more vocal than others, some like to roleplay more than others, and some just don’t say much at all. Test the waters. Start tossing in some artwork that isn’t really related to your predetermined fandom, but is something you like nonetheless. Some people will join you, others may or may not leave.

Stagnation! Oh, the fearsome word in the back of every artists’ mind. It can come in many ways – the topic you’ve chosen has stagnated with the crowd, your style hasn’t improved, your work looks the same as work from last year. Don’t fret. It’s normal. Remember what I said about out-growing the fandom? That's right. Time to hop from this wagon to the next.

You now have a new slate, young adult. With it, you bring your old followers, but you can now expand your reaches into a whole new ecosystem. Your experience will prove helpful in learning how to deal with these new critters.

At this point, you’ve matured enough as a Deviant to notice some issues. You’ve probably seen people’s work get stolen. You’ve heard about theft before, and you recognize it when you see it. DeviantArt is not safe from it. They do their best to pray these evildoers away, but it doesn’t always work. There’s really nothing you can do about it – just mutter a word or two to the perpetrator about not stealing work, and leave it be. You don’t quite have the influence to make change yet, and that lack of power will seem crippling. Just hold your breath for now.

Alright. Let’s recap. You’ve joined DeviantArt. You’ve submitted your work. You’ve shared it with groups. You’ve received feedback. You’ve practiced. Your skill has improved. You’ve gained fans. You’ve gained popularity (of some sort). What next?

From here, you can make your own decisions. You have fairly good footing in this part of the internet, and in general, the ground will support you no matter which direction you turn. Stick with the fandom you like, or find new ones. Make your own fandom by creating original content, like comic strips. Wander around groups and help others improve. Start managing a group of your own. Leave and never come back. Offer commissions. It’s all up to you now.