After my previous mention of some artwork I liked, I realized that the internet is a perfect vehicle for amateur artists to strut their stuff but that there didn’t seem to be many venues to gain exposure, other than standard artist-run website or the blogosphere. I thought about creating a site where members could share their art but, as in so much on the net, I’ve been beaten to the punch.
Deviant Art appears to have a huge amount of traction in attracting both professional and amateur artists to posting their stuff. Like anything else, a good deal of the posted art isn’t that good, but some of it is amazing. The site takes a little getting used to, as it isn’t clear exactly how it works at first, largely because they use the word “deviation” to mean “artwork that someone posted”. I’ve grown a bit addicted to cruising through this site. I particularly enjoy something I call “favorite hopping”, where you pick an artist at random look at their gallery. You then look at their list of favorites (each artist can build their own list of the art of other people they like) and find a piece you like. Examine that artist’s gallery and favorites. Repeat. You can see some really neat stuff. (Some of the art contains nudity and adult themes, so may not be work safe, though I think there is a filter you can turn on to avoid that kind of stuff if you want.)
Just for the heck of it, I’ve created an account and posted some photo work I’ve done. Most of the variants of “wordman” were taken for account names, so I’ve used the name crop.