When I first discovered DeviantArt (then stylized as deviantART) at the ripe age of 12, I was over the moon about it. Wow, a website just for artists! At the time I discovered it, I had exclusively visited Neopets as my online source of entertainment. Within Neopets, I was huge fan of the comics section of the user-run newspaper, The Neopian Times. Practically every cartoonist there had a DA account and I wanted to be apart of the community. So for the first time in my internet life, I lied about my age just to have a DA account.
I have considered myself an artist since I was a child. I spent my days doodling people, cartoon characters, simple landscapes, and big letters. I even remember drawing my own versions of stories in the Bible (I had found a book of gospels written for children.) It wasn't until 2003 that I began keeping record of everything I ever drew. My sister had kept a folder of drawings that she had done and I was inspired to keep a folder of my own. I drew things specifically for that folder. Most of it consisted of Sanrio characters, stencils, and anthro OCs. Some of my earliest comics were not saved because they lost or destroyed before I had time to stash them away. I had a knack for writing and had been reading since I was 3, so I began dreaming of being a children's book writer and illustrator.
In 2007, I decided I would pursue art for a career. Because I enjoyed making comics and original characters, I considered myself an illustrator. I started collecting newspaper comic strips and made gag comics of my own. This gave me the motivation to submit my first comic to The Neopian Times. Unfortunately, browsing the internet was as far as my computer skills would go because I had no idea how to shrink my file size. And thus, rejection. When I did figure it out, I never got a response back. I contacted a new cartoonist about it and she told me it took her 3 years for her submission to be accepted. THREE YEARS?! Now how will I share my hilarious comics for the world to enjoy?!?!!?
Enter deviantart.
I followed the pattern of my idols and uploaded my comics. But hey, this site isn't just about Neopets comics! I can put ANYTHING I want! This newfound discovery of scanning things and putting them online for the world to see became my new obsession. I literally flooded the "Newest Deviations" sections with my stupid doodles. (It was hilarious.)
Shortly after I turned 13, I began expanding to other places on the internet and creating accounts. I was beginning to be conscious of my online presence, so I stopped using my old Neopets username. But it's 2007 and I was everything you would expect I would be as a tween in those internet days. I would flip-flop between being a serious, mystical role-play thing and "l0l iM sO rAnDoMz p3nguin of DOOOOM!!!!!11 XDDD" culture of the time. deviantART had no means of changing your username at the time, so I did what everyone else did and created a new account with a fresh new name I came up with on the spot!
Echo-ofthe-Rose was supposed to be my "mature" persona and I tried very hard to live up to it. I would post pictures of roses in my front yard with a Kodak digital snapshot camera. For some reason I lost access to my scanner and uploaded photos of my drawings with that same camera. I had no concern over quality, only quantity. Just like everyone else, I obsessed over my stats: page views, comments, followers. I focused my efforts on my making my art in the anime/manga style that dominated the front page. I was into the art memes and journal tags, but I rarely ever had active followers.
I had absolutely no focus to my gallery. In reality, it was a glorified sketchbook of doodles masquerading as finished pieces. Each time I sketched a character, I wrote a backstory for them, came up with a universe with the intent of drawing a comic, and then stopped there. My comics comprised of gags my family came up with, inconsistent quality, and do-overs. As the years went by and the site grew larger, the expectation of quality was greater. When I started taking art classes in high school, I paid attention to this and re-uploaded all of my work by properly scanning them. But a habit grew that I would end up regretting and slowly killing my drive to constantly share.
When I started community college, I decided to stop posting sketches and works-in-progress. I made it my goal to only post up finished work. This was a mistake. I did not have the foresight of how social media would play into my life as a professional. My priorities were shifted over to making freebies on avatar sites and making online friends, very few which would last. A bigger regret would be not posting my finished pieces because I had the "I could fix this later to make it look better" mentality. I never got back to them. In fact, when I transferred to state university, my teachers discouraged me from ever returning to them.
DeviantArt had become less and less of a priority to keep updated. I would only browse and the same thing always popped up - anime, fan art, and cosplay. It had taken me a long time to realize this website was more towards hobbyists. The quality and skill on display was something I could not compete with since I spent more time with traditional mediums than my digital software. My documenting skills were still awful and the time it took to take one photo was time consuming. The more I spent time focusing on school, the less I drew for leisure.
Part of me is glad that I took time off from this website. The first thing I saw when I signed on was My Little Pony fan art and furry adopts. Going to school gave me a greater understanding of how the art world works and developing my personal identity as an artist. I'm looking towards other outlets to post up my artwork. DA is now a low priority for me as it's always been a dumping ground for anything I did. But it's time I pick up an old habit again. I feel like I had lost a spark with no noticing, not realizing I was the one that had be proactive about getting my name out there. Enough with the re-uploads and revamps. Now's time for mass deletion, clean-ups, and NEW things for the sake of a professional appeal.
Wow, this took forever to write. Nobody will read this anyways, so I'll post a tl;dr later.