Deviant Art Sketch Dump Comments

Ok, something I have to get off my chest about DeviantArt.

For those of you who don't know, DeviantArt is a place where you can browse other artists work and post your own, sort of like a MySpace for artists. So when I first stumbled upon it, I gave it a passing glance and moved on. Several months later I received a link to a friend's DeviantArt where this person had made some comments I didn't agree with. So, I immedietly made an account and responded.

Another month or so passes, and I go back on there and post a bunch of artwork, and begin updating it regularly, mostly because it was a fun tool for showing people my artwork.

So, what's my gripe? Well, DeviantArt has 2 galleries available to each artist, a 'scraps' gallery, which is only accesible through a small link on your page, and a main gallery, which is the meat of your account. Now, maybe I have some weird perception about these two galleries, but I beleive the MAIN gallery should be things that are portfolio-worthy, and the scraps is a sketch dump (as it's name implies).

This is also a great tool personally for judging other artist's when I receive comments and so forth. If I get a message from a stranger, I automatically head to their scraps, and this is where my gripe is.

I'm going to go ahead and say that a lot, if not most, of the artists on DeviantArt don't have an idea of keeping these seperate. I constantly see the Scraps section covered in full blown colored pieces, that clearly took a lot of effort, and the main gallery polluted with quickies. So I'm going to dish out some advice I got a long time ago, DON'T MIX UP YOUR SKETCHES WITH YOUR MAIN WORK. It gives a bad perception of you as an artist, makes you look lazy, and I immideatly lose intrest in anything you have to show me. Not to mention that it makes you look worse than you really are, it's exactly the impression you give when someone scans over your main body of work and your throw aways, and sees that they look the same, and not in the good way either.

-Vanja