Happy Birthday dA! I can’t believe that dA is now 14!
I signed up for my first deviantART account on October 16, 2005, after spending a couple of weeks of lurking and admiring all the beautiful art on the site. I can’t remember how I ever found this site nearly a decade ago, but at the time I was really into fan art and I think that I must have followed a link from someone’s website over to here.
When I first joined, I was in college and I had just switched my major over to art and I wanted a place where I could post some of my creations and get some feedback. Over the past 9 years, I’ve learned a lot from this site and the dA community. The tutorials that people submit to this site are absolutely invaluable – everything from drawing, to digital painting, to html, and editing journal skins.
More recently I’ve been fascinated with animated .gifs but I never knew how they were made or how exactly to make them, or even what program to use, until I ran into a few tutorials on here and eventually learned how to create them in Photoshop.
First Try
Second Try
Using Photos
Still Learning