**PLEASE READ**

There have been some changes to the rules and folders in the group, as some of you may (or may not) have noticed. I'll try to keep it brief. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

PLEASE reread the group rules on the main page of the group. There have been some updated rules added. I'll reiterate a few here in greater detail:

READ THE FOLDER DESCRIPTIONS before submitting to a folder. If you want your submission to be accepted more quickly, ensuring you submit to the correct folder makes our job easier since we do not have to ask you to resubmit.


More than often, deviations submitted to the wrong folder are skipped over by us in favor of those that are submitted to the right folder! It’s very hard when there are dozens of wrongly submitted deviations to go through them one by one and ask the artist to resubmit to the correct folder. And when we get waves of submissions, the wrongly submitted ones may expire because we don’t have the ability to keep up with so many wrong submissions. So please ensure you submit to the correct folder!

NOTE: when we ask you to WITHDRAW your deviation and resubmit it to the correct folder, please, please withdraw it, don’t just submit again to the correct folder. We have to go and decline your submissions when you do not withdraw them, and that again clogs up our feed and makes our job harder!!
If you don’t know how to withdraw, it’s in your Notifications tab, all the way to the bottom where you see Correspondence Items. There, you’ll see your submission pending, where you have the option to withdraw it. Click withdraw and it will be withdrawn.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT ADVERTISING OF ANY KIND. No commissions price lists, no Patreon accounts, no raffles, no adoptables auctions, etc.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT sketch dumps, character reference sheets, or any other such deviations. We want art that focuses on something. We’d rather have a beautiful portrait of your character than a reference sheet. The portrait is art, the reference sheet is just that – a reference sheet.

MIXED MEDIA is only for art that has both traditional and digital components.

CARTOONS AND COMICS is only for comic pages (of your own comics and your own OCs, not superhero fanart, etc.). Cartoon style OCs may also be submitted here, but note that we accept them at our discretion depending on whether we consider your deviation cartoon or not. Want to play it safe? If it’s a comic page, submit here. If it’s not, then submit to the Digital Art folder or any other appropriate folder.

ANIME/MANGA? If your style is anime or manga (it’s a very distinct style – look it up if you don’t know), it would be much appreciated if you could submit your deviation into this folder. Your anime-/manga-style OCs go into this folder. Your friends’ anime/manga OCs from art trades or gifts and the like go into this folder as well. FAN ART OF ANIME/MANGA DOES NOT BELONG HERE.

MEMES. Oh memes. Improvement memes, draw this again memes, summary of this year memes, and other art-improvement related memes go into the Improvement Meme folder, please! We do not accept meet the artist meme and other art-unrelated memes. (No pepe memes either.)

OTHER FOLDER. This folder is specifically for any deviations that don’t fit into any of the other folders. More specifically, things such as animations can be submitted here and they will be accepted. All deviations that belong in any of our main folders but that are submitted to the Other folder will be declined without asking you to resubmit and without explanation.

MATURE CONTENT? If you have a picture that shows genitalia/private body parts (anus), female nipples, sexually suggestive content etc., you MUST have a filter and it MUST be submitted to the Mature 18+ folder. This is so we can stay compliant with DA rules.

No pornographic content, please. If we see submissions depicting explicit sexual intercourse (as we have received) and other explicit sexual content, your deviation will be declined and reported as it is against DeviantArt’s policy and rules.

FAN ART MUST BE SUBMITTED EXCLUSIVELY TO THE FAN ART FOLDER. Characters from novels, anime/manga, movies, comics, games, etc., must go into the Fan Art folder, please. Drawing someone else’s OC is not fan art. Drawing the actor from a movie is not fan art (e.g., Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow is fan art. Johnny Depp as himself is not fan art).

If you are unsure if your deviation should go into the Fan Art folder, please drop a message on the front page!! We think Fan Art is pretty self-explanatory, but don’t hesitate to ask nevertheless.


Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them below and we’ll answer them! :)
Artist Spotlight Feature #2
:bulletgreen: Earlinwe :bulletgreen:

Tea Mermaid by Harkale-Linai
:iconharkale-linai:


About the Artist

:bulletblack: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Hello! I'm a 25-year-old woman from France, and I've been a hobbyist artist for almost as many years. :) As long as I can remember, I've been drawing. A lot of imaginary people's faces, a few characters and objects... My school notebooks are full of them. About a year and a half ago, I discovered digital painting, and joined DeviantArt... since then, I've improved a lot.

:bulletblack: Can you share one fun fact about yourself?

I'm actually the queen of England in disguise. I'm only pretending to be French because their food is actually edible. And their English mistakes are fun.

:bulletblack: What do you feel is your best work and why?

That's a tough question... Partly because I'm not a very good judge for my own work, partly because I take many things into account when judging a piece: the composition and values, the colours, the anatomy and realism, the edges, etc. But on some works, I suddenly gained a better understanding of one of these points. The paintings on which I "levelled up" my art are my favourite ones, and some of them are featured below this wall of text!


Inspiration

:bulletblack: What genre influences your art the most?

At the moment, probably fantasy illustrations. I love how everything is stronger, sharper than it should be: mountains are impossibly steep, the characters' eyes shine too much, the weapons are huge, the colours are extremely saturated,...

:bulletblack: What artist(s) do you look up to (past or present)?

Every single one of the artists in my DA Watchlist! A lot of impressionist and realistic (from the Renaissance to the XXIst century) painters as well. If I were a medium, I'd give a spectral hug to Monet, Van Gogh, Rockwell, Delacroix, Caravaggio, Rembrandt,...

:bulletblack: What is your biggest inspiration?

Most of my painting ideas come from daydreams... When I have an idea, I refine it in my head for a few more days, then I start sketching.

:bulletblack: What motivates you when you are discouraged or suffer from art block?

When I'm discouraged, I often try something different. Landscapes, for instance, or traditional sketches, just to relax...


Technical Aspects

:bulletblack: What art mediums do you use? Which do you prefer and why?

I mostly paint digitally, because it's much easier and quicker to use colours and try different things... I didn't know how to paint before learning digital art, so I only recently discovered how much I loved working with colour! I sometimes paint with acrylics, watercolour or pencils, but digital painting is my only true love ^^

:bulletblack: What are your artist tools?

:bulletblack:Traditional:bulletblack: I've got a few acrylic paints, watercolours and pencils. Nothing fancy ^^

:bulletblack:Digital:bulletblack: I use a Wacom Intuos tablet, and Photoshop.

:bulletblack: What do you find is your biggest struggle with art?

EVERYTHING!!! (read in Gul'dan's voice) More seriously, I'd say landscape composition. I wish I had bayardwu's (or other amazing DA artists') mad skillz. I still have a lot to learn...

:bulletblack: How long, on average, does it take for you to complete a piece?

From 2 (studies) to 15 hours (large landscapes).


In Conclusion

:bulletblack: What advice do you have for other aspiring artists?

Focus on what you enjoy the most (in my case, portraits from imagination, but it might be manga characters or space scenes), but don't neglect everything else... Because that "everything else" might be useful someday. Going out of your comfort zone is the best way to improve, just make sure it doesn't become a burden. Good luck, and have fun!

:bulletblack: Other than DA, where can you be found?

I also have an ArtStation account! It's here:
www.artstation.com/artist/earl…
But to be honest, I'm much more active on DA :)


Thank you, Earlinwe, from all of us here at STA, for taking part in our Artist Spotlight Series!!!
_______________________________________

Here are some more works from this incredible artist!


Vittoria Ceretti by Harkale-Linai Awaken the Spirits by Harkale-Linai Banana yellow, blue bandana by Harkale-Linai Cairn by Harkale-Linai A Peaceful Heart by Harkale-Linai Underwater by Harkale-Linai The Lights of Shattrath by Harkale-Linai Soul of the Mountain by Harkale-Linai Amber by Harkale-Linai


:wave:
Welcome, as we kick off a new series here at Self Taught Artist!
This will be the first of hopefully many artist spotlights highlighting some of the incredible artists that submit to our gallery here at STA and possibly outside our group as well.
If you have a particular artist you would love to hear about, or get advice from, feel free to let us know! If we feel the same, and the artist is willing, we will feature them here! :) Also, let us know: What questions would you ask an artist?



Artist Spotlight Feature #1
:bulletgreen: Velnna :bulletgreen:


:iconvelnna:


About the Artist

:bulletblack: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Hello!
The name’s Velnna across the worldwide web, and I’m a 21-year-old self-taught artist. I’ve been drawing since I learned how to hold a pencil (although if you ever see me holding one you’ll wonder if I ever did x) ) and writing since I learned how to spell. I’m more of a rational than a spontaneous/artsy kind of person, so pursuing an art-related career was never a real option until I completed my BSc in Computer Science last year and decided to dive head-first into the world of CG animation. I’m not a full-time 3D wannabe haha

Shortlisting my hobbies, I split my spare time between drawing, evil plotting writing, sports practice that borders addiction and some coding every now and then. In an ideal world, I’d squeeze a ton of video games in, but it turns out that sleep is a thing.

:bulletblack: Can you share one fun fact about yourself?

Little me was a top-notch art plagiarist. I remember being around five y.o. and building my own light table with books and dismembered picture frames so I could draw over W.I.T.C.H. magazines and tell my parents the drawings were all me xD Pretty sure I learned to draw through tracing…

:bulletblack: What do you feel is your best work and why?

I can’t really point anything out. I think classifying artwork as your “best” is a trade-off between how you see it, what you’ve taken from it and how other people see it, amongst other things. In general, works that involve original characters/stories are the dearest to me and the ones I can always come back to and appreciate, despite the good ol’ cringe that comes with looking at your old artwork. I can, however, say that my proudest artistic accomplishment this far was having planned, written, reworked and even self-published part of my own fantasy novel. It was back in 2013, and since then I became fully aware of the endless amount of work it still needed to become, well, decent (whether you like it or not, your 16-year-old brain will be your 16-year-old-brain). But writing it and presenting it to people took enough sacrifice, discipline and courage, and above all was one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve had ^^


Inspiration

:bulletblack: What genre influences your art the most?

Fantasy/adventure stuff has always been my favourite, but I work in waves and find it hard to generalize anything about my tastes/inspirations. I’ve been inspired by fantasy/sci-fi literature from early on, obviously some anime series as well (there’s no skipping anime haha), feature films and more recently comics. So. Many. Comics.

:bulletblack: What artist(s) do you look up to (past or present)?

Too many to count ^^” I don’t specifically look up to any great artistic name, even because I’ve only scratched the surface of art history. If an artist works hard and puts their soul into artwork that speaks to me, I’ll look up to them. :)

Style-wise, at an early stage I was influenced by the art of the W.I.T.C.H. comic series, some anime series (Sakura the Card Captor, Digimon, Tokyo Mew Mew and pretty much all of what TV programming threw at me) and Square Enix video games (Kingdom Hearts was my life for a while x) ). After spending my early childhood plagiarizing (lol), I began to be very keen on having my very own distinct style, so tried to avoid taking too much from a particular existing one.

I’ll point Adele Lorienne (Saimain) as the one whose work opened the door for most of my artistic progress. I was innocently googling fantasy stuff when I came across one of her stunning pieces, which made me discover deviantArt – and without this community I’d probably not have improved half as much as I did. :)

:bulletblack: What is your biggest inspiration?

Tough question… I don’t think I have one big source of inspiration, it’s more like a Frankenstein’s monster of things really.

:bulletblack: What motivates you when you are discouraged or suffer from art block?

The first thing that helps me with an art block is a context switch. Going for a run, focusing on work, hanging out with people, anything to lift some of the weight. As much as I love taking inspiration from other artists, looking at their work hardly ever helps, so my strategy is usually to refer back to my own stuff. Look at how much I’ve improved, remember challenges I’ve faced and, of course, think of all the support people have given me, online or not. And if this isn’t enough to push me through the art block, I look at the big picture – at the future of the projects I want to develop and at the ideas I’m saving for later. Discouragement is a natural lump on the road, and if nothing else time will take care of it. :)


Technical Aspects

:bulletblack: What art mediums do you use? Which do you prefer and why?

I’ll have a go at anything digital, 2D and 3D, but I’m a sucker for pencil sketching, too. I’ll say digital drawing and painting are my favourites, but the closer to traditional art they get, the more fun I find them.

:bulletblack: What are your artist tools?

:bulletblack:Traditional:bulletblack: Mechanical pencil, 100% of the time (you can judge me, I haven’t used proper art supplies since primary school x) )

:bulletblack:Digital:bulletblack: Right now I’m using the iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and ProCreate, for a matter of mobility. My favourite tools this far are, however, the Wacom Cintiq 13HD and either Paint Tool SAI or SketchBook Pro, depending on the operating system (Photoshop if needed, though it’s not my favourite). Nothing bad to point out about the Wacom Intuos tablet where the Cintiq doesn’t fit.

:bulletblack: What do you find is your biggest struggle with art?

I struggle with backgrounds, but it comes mostly from not knowing how to colour/light them properly most of the time.

:bulletblack: How long, on average, does it take for you to complete a piece?

It depends on the type, really. I can say that the maximum time for an average piece, with colours and background, is around 3 hours, mostly because I’ll cap unnecessary details whenever possible. Relatively clean character drawings with no colour never take much longer than 20-30min.


In Conclusion

:bulletblack: What advice do you have for other aspiring artists?

Get things done, not perfect. I’m a perfectionist myself, and have repeatedly left things unfinished or gone back to fix them because the result wasn’t to my liking – don’t do that. Improvement comes from new things and making an idea happen or coming to the end of a project is one of the most rewarding things you can experience, no matter how many imperfections it may have.

Do it for yourself, then for others. Art is something to be shared, and it’s only natural to want others to approve of pieces you’ve put time and effort in. However, unless you’re creating art for merely commercial purposes, YOU should be the first one to enjoy it. If you’re not taking pleasure from it, rethink your work based on your own liking, then adapt it as you will.

Don’t be afraid of change. Rethinking an idea, changing medium, fixing mistakes and taking constructive feedback can be hard, but you never know how much they can help you improve your art. Try to avoid letting something become too precious.

Be comfortable, then challenge yourself. I can’t stress how important I think being comfortable with your artistic process is. Try harder techniques, more complex work and challenging projects, but keep a comfortable style you can fall back on so that you don’t just stop producing content or burn out. Increase difficulty when you feel that you’re at ease with your current working process.

There’s a million other things I could say, but these are probably the ones that I’ve found more helpful. Just as a footnote: practice, practice, practice, and practice some more. There are no magical formulas here ;)

:bulletblack: Other than DA, where can you be found?

Instagram: www.instagram.com/m_maf_f/

Tapastic: tapas.io/velnna

Webtoons: www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/…

Online Portfolio: mafaldafernando.com/


Thank you, Velnna, from all of us here at STA, for taking part in our Artist Spotlight Series!!!
_______________________________________

Here are some more works from this incredible artist! Enjoy!





Hello!! :wave:

It is time for another feature!


We continue to get a lot of amazing art submissions! Keep up the good work guys! We look forward to seeing more! Here are a few that stuck out to us in the past few weeks. :D

Staff participating in the picks this time around: :iconalexlehner::iconvoiceinforestshadow::iconlolo-is-seadoo-ing::icongnewi:

'Gaia #2' by SootheNoo1959
Follow the Path by Jack-Burton25:bigthumb665974177: [Comission] Haku Sculpture by RedPersik Siamese Fighter, Betta fish. Acrylic on canvas by Rick-Lilley Lord Enlil by tamarazeegers 605 by Magnolia-Elv:bigthumb664933907: good night by Inkola
Grey cat by Akadio
Give me tenderness by FlashW Kyanite the Cat -  steampunk pewter pendant by IkushIkush The High Priestess by SylviaRitter where that fish by BabanIllustration Cherry blossom antlers by Aria-Illustration See-you-1 by MatteoAscente When I met her by BloominStella A spring day by Zaiav Yun Seon Young - Study by LeoQueval


Thank you all for your submissions!! :la:
Hello!! :wave:
Taking time today to recognize art by our contributors and some of the amazing works by you all as well!! Please take a look through and visit some of these incredible deviants! :love:




Special Feature!!


Art from the amazing Contributors who have been working so hard to keep your submissions moving through and in the right place! :)

Foreboding... by VoiceInForestShadow:bigthumb641242286:

Ravenheart by Seokthih Boba - Fan Art by KTessierArt
Pond by CavyMomma Sailor Saturn by EinzbernArt




Special staff pics of your amazing submissions!!



*Boop* [+speedpaint] by Martith Towards the Lighthouse by ShanghaiSarah

Four Dirty Paws by XxBattleLionessxX Portrait of Kasia by DawidZdobylak
Tofu's House by BabanIllustration
:bigthumb660342881: Winter Joy by VladislavPantic
Distant Dreams by Capturing-the-Light Sunset in London by takmaj

Forest lullaby by Anisis Otaku Gal by SlothBeing
:bigthumb661908204: Snatch for a dream by FlashW
Sharena by Klegs Bright girl by TZarapka

here have a wine by Tabanei


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