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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

Project Educate: Being a People PersonSo you've got the equipment, you've got the top notch camera, the lighting, the studio, the backdrop and even the perfect weather - everything you need for a portrait photography shoot right? Wrong. The key behind all photographs that contain a living and breathing subject is to have the natural look. Just like the key to a conceptual shot is having the idea, the key to portraiture photography is having the eye. Co-operative subjects help too!
I have especially found in the past, that people develop a pained and strained look on their face when the camera is pointed in their direction. Interestingly enough, it happens more often at Weddings. The bride and groom quite often develop the look that they might have when they've just finished writing out the cheque for me to photograph their big day...
Then, quite suddenly one day, I got it. It was when a stunning bridesmaid at a wedding lifted her hands in front of her face and squealed when I clicked the camera in her

Traditional and Digital Mixed MediaFix That Miscat! is a series of articles aiming to help you distinguish between galleries that are commonly confused or abused in the category system here on deviantART. In this occasion we'll talk about Mixed Media, both Traditional and Digital.
Mixed Media
Mixed Media within deviantArt refers to artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed. For example, a drawing that combines color pencils, watercolors and inks in the same canvas.

To be considered as Mixed Media, an artwork needs to combine 2 or more traditional or digital mediums. However a big misconception is that Mixed Media refers only to artworks combining digital AND traditional and this is not entirely true. The combination can also be between traditional mediums only or digital mediums only and in fact, when you intend to submit to this category, you'll

Project Educate: Classic Portrait PhotographyClassic Portraits are Photographs of people in traditional pose. These are often formal, refined and restrained in style. As you will see within the Gallery they often involve a plain and simple background which is a popular feature of Classic Portraiture. One of the most notable things within the Classic Portrait Photography Gallery is that there are a lot of art nudes. This actually occurs across the board with People & Portraits and I cannot stress enough - that if your work features nudity, it belongs within the artistic nude gallery!

Conversion to black and white with concentration on bringing out tones and shadows creates that timeless classic look and is often favoured by the elite artists that submit to the People & Portraits - Classic Gallery.

Whilst D-SLR's have a monochrome function, for the most part (mine h

Everyday we're CV'ingAs a Community Volunteer - I do as much or as little within the community that I feel comfortable doing. We're not pressured to do this and that, we don't even have to give a Daily Deviation every day, we choose how we promote our selected galleries/chats and forums and we're not fixed to any specific rule on how much or how little we do. But I do believe that it's important to share with you just what the community volunteers do and why we do it. More importantly it's so easy to get lost on this site full of many people - and miss out on the awesome that's going on. So I'm going to share with you exactly what the latest awesome is...
Project Educate
Almost every week since October last year the Community Volunteers have been working hard both independently and as part of small teams to bring You Project Educate.
Project Educate is about bringing forward art forms whether they are popular or overlooked and giving

PE: Digital Art VS other categoriesThe category system within deviantArt has the purpose to organize the thousands of artworks submitted every day and group them together in accordance to style, media, genre and/or theme, etc. Imagine deviantArt without categories, it would be a chaos! Imagine yourself wanting to browse for photography only; without the system organizing every deviation by media, you would find yourself unable to filter artworks that aren't photography in your search results.
Thus the importance of categorizing your artwork correctly. By submitting your work to the appropiate category combined with a correct use of keywords, you're a step ahead of being discovered by people wanting to search for art like yours.
All this sounds so nice and all, but what happens when a particular piece could fit in several categories? The category system as it is now is very specialized and has literally thousands of different subcategories buried down tons of more subcategories, which is both a blessing and a curse. Havi

Photography Troubleshooting: The Watermark FAQ"How do I protect my photography and art in general?"
~=Eitvys200
"As =Eitvys200 pointed out, at least 1 journal per month makes it to the top of the list and is about stealing art. Sometimes this is something small such as posting a piece to facebook, other times you see hoards of pieces on a website selling wallpapers or something similar. Regardless of how it happens, or where, it can hurt just as much to see your hard work disregarded and especially someone else profiting or taking credit.
Protecting work is a huge deal for some people, and not for others. It depends entirely on your outlook - how you view your work and indeed whether or not there needs to be some constrictions on it due to the content being a child, or family member. But how do we protect our work properly from art theft and wrongful use? The simple answer is you can't provide for every eventuality. Even if you upload your work to a website where right click -> copy is disabled,

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

Categorising Darkroom - Digital or Traditional?On dA, the galleries for Darkroom Photography are split into two categories - Digital and Traditional.
Digital Darkroom is for Photographs which have been digitally processed or edited with the use of computer software to emulate traditional and alternative film darkroom techniques.

Traditional Darkroom is for Scans of photographic prints and negatives where the images have been physically developed and/or printed using traditional and alternative film darkroom techniques. This gallery is not for digitally created or edited images.

It seems like an obvious difference, right? How much further explaining really needs to be done? Well, just a little, because there are a few exceptions to what you might assume to be hard and fast rules.
The Rule
Photos created with the involvement of a digital camera should never be placed in Darkroom > Traditional.

Complaints About Quality Declines in DD'sComplaints about quality declines in DDs
Let's take a quick look at what a Daily Deviation is first. You might remember this article from our last PE week A Daily Deviation is NOT an award, but a feature. If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at it! It's a great read and you can get a good foundation as to what a Daily Deviation stands for.
So, I'll be touching on the subject of "Complaints about quality declines in Daily Deviations". Why is this so important to touch on? That's a great question and I will be more than happy to answer it below as I describe some key factors that are often overlooked in the way of art vs quality.
Addressing Quality of Deviations
"A picture is worth a thousand words."
There is a lot of this going around "Daily Deviations are losing quality. They're not as beautimous as they used to be.". How about we step out of the shoes of "what is and isn't art" for just a s

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 Daily Deviations - So you want to suggest DDs?You're browsing deviantART or are simply checking your message centre and find a wonderful art piece. You want to suggest it as a Daily Deviation because you believe it truly deserves to be seen by the community as a whole. But how to properly suggest a DD? This article will explain the process.
Things to check before sending a suggestion:
The first thing you need to check is if the artist has been given a Daily Deviation in the past 6 months. Volunteers cannot feature anyone who's had a DD in that period of time with no exceptions, as this has been hard-coded into deviantART's system.
"But how do I check an artist's Daily Deviations?" you may ask. Simply go to their gallery, click browse and scroll down. If they have any DDs, you'll be able to find a link to them at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you can add "/dds" after their profile url and click enter on your browser's address bar.

Celebrating Diversity #14What is art? Probably one of those questions that will remain without a definite and universal answer. However I think we all can identify art when we see it, even if we don't know to explain why.

Art has a very personal definition and there are no rights or wrongs. For me, art is to find beauty and something worth taking the time to pay close attention to, in everything that surrounds us.

Some people say everything is art. Some agree and some don't. Regardless of your position in this debate I think is safe to say that maybe not everything is art, but everything has the potential to be art, if we know where to look.

In a world as diverse as ours, there is an infinite plethora of things which are beautiful in their own way, it's just a matter o

Community Voices: What is a Daily Deviation?DDs: The deviantART definition
So, as the title says, What in the world IS a Daily Deviation (DD), anyway?
You know what deviantART says about it, right? Under :faq61: it says:
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.
That says nothing about a DD being a perfect specimen of art-- in fact, it doesn't even use the word "art" at all.

Basically, as CVs, when we are giving a DD, we are doing so because we think the image is interesting and well-done and deserves your attention. It may be technically exquisite. It may be technically quite good but exceptionally thought-provoking. It may be exceedingly creative. It may be all of these things! Above all else, it should stand out in some way from others in that medium or gallery.

Celebrating Diversity #13In this issue of Celebrating Diversity, I would like to remind you of an amazing feeling...when you see a piece of art created in a medium or genre that you have little or no experience of working in, and it feels like you're witnessing something magical, something beyond your comprehension.
It's wonderful to revel in the joy of How do they do that? and find inspiration in the creations of other artists. So I challenge you to take a step outside of the galleries that you regularly browse and immerse yourself in the experience of indulging in something new.

How do you celebrate diversity?

Do you regularly browse, comment on and collect art that's wildly different from what you create?

Do you watch artists who use mediums that you don't use in your own

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Submitted: September 26, 2012
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~Jujulica Sep 28, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Aw, you're such a great person! ^^
You're very helpful and nice and social!

Thank youuuu!!!! (also, thank you for the feature)

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^ValaSedai Sep 29, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Haha you are most welcome!

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^Kaz-D Sep 28, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Featured -> [link]

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^ValaSedai Sep 28, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Thank you so much! <3

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Mood: Love

=jane-beata Sep 27, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

Hello (: You've been FEATURED

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^ValaSedai Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Wow, thank you so much, that's really great!

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=jane-beata Sep 27, 2012 Professional Traditional Artist

I would honestly keep on postponing next feature if I hadn't read your article yesterday, thank you! (:

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^ValaSedai Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

That's so sweet of you! :')

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^deshrubber Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Good information! I started doing features because I was bored one night. I still love doing them, and finding the deviations. Remember to have fun doing them!

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^ValaSedai Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Indeed, fun is always an important factor! ^^

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