One of the great things about dA is that it's not only a place where you can promote your own work - it's also a place where you can promote art you admire by other people. There's a whole bunch of ways that you can do this, so if you'd like to help draw attention to awesome art created by your friends or brilliant things you've found while browsing, read on and find out how you could make someone's day.

Featuring art on your profile page and in your journal

At present, using images and thumbnails on your profile and in your journal is a subscriber only feature. If you look around dA you'll see all sorts of different features - selections from people's recent favourites, thumbnails of work on a theme, collections of prints etc.

Featuring art in news articles

The news system on dA allows everyone to submit news, and that includes writing articles which promote other people's work. If you browse the News section of dA you'll see lots of articles filled with thumbnails, and while it's cool to be able to show off the work that you love in such a public way don't get carried away - when writing feature or thumb-based articles, do your best to ensure that they have a theme and are informative too. You may want to shine a spotlight on an artist you admire or a specific style of art, so use your imagination. You could interview people and illustrate your article with examples of their work or you could put together an educational article using work from dA as examples of artistic techniques. The possibilities are endless, and there are thousands of existing news articles to draw inspiration from.

Making sure your features are accessible to all

When you're putting features together, whether in your journal or in a news article, remember that not everyone on dA has a super-fast internet connection. If your journal or news article has a tonne of thumbnails, it'll take forever to load on a dial-up connection, so keep this in mind when you're compiling your features. The more accessible your features are, the more people are going to be able to enjoy them and the more attention you'll be bringing to the people and art that you're featuring. Happy promoting!

Suggesting Daily Deviations

Daily Deviations are staff-chosen features, selected by Volunteer Gallery Moderators and other staff members and volunteers who have access to the selection tools. One of the best things about DDs is that anyone can suggest work to be featured. Regardless of whether you're a member, a subscriber, a beta tester or a senior member YOU are welcome to suggest art that you love to the relevant Gallery Moderators. Of course there's no guarantee that all suggestions will be featured, and all the GMs have their own guidelines which you should check out before sending suggestion notes.

Sharing deviations

On the left hand side of every deviation page (where the artist has sharing enabled), where the links for Full Viewing and Collecting are, you'll see a Share This/Blog It link which will allow you to send a thumbnail of the deviation to someone else in a note, and (if the deviant has this setting enabled) display the deviation with a link to it's page and the artist's userpage on your blog or on blogging services such as LiveJournal and DIGG.


For more information about all the points above, and loads more useful stuff, pay a visit to the Help & FAQ section.  It's really easy to search through and can be found at the bottom of every single page on dA.