Daily Deviations Week
We've all heard this, Daily Deviations are constantly being given to artwork and artists who are already 'famous' and 'popular' on DA. "What happened to the unknown artists?!" - "This is just elitism!!" - "What a broken system, it's such a shame! Always the same people being featured!" these are some of the many complaints we can find here on DA. So what's the deal? Are DDs really only given to already popular art? No.
Popular vs Unknown art
Imagine this, you wake up tomorrow morning and you're a Community Volunteer on DA covering whichever category you'd consider in your expertize. Wow! All the possibilities! It's now time for you to select and schedule some Daily Deviations, so, what do you do?
- Look for quality artwork that accurately represents the gallery you are covering.
- Try to feature a variety of artwork so that you are representing the diversity of your gallery.
- Feature a healthy amount of popular and unknown art.
These are only a few of the many things you would need to take into consideration when featuring Daily Deviations, they are the ones pertinent to this topic. Let's address each one of them and how they relate to featuring popular or unknown art:
Look for quality artwork that accurately represents the gallery you are covering:
No matter what art gallery you are covering, you understand that as a CV you must feature quality work. Quality can be defined in many different ways, and seen in many different ways as well. Quality isn't just about the technical skills, but also the creativity and meaning of a piece of art. For example, just because a photograph has a sharp focus and good light, that doesn't mean it should automatically be featured. Many many many things go through the mind of a CV before featuring a piece of art, and representing ones gallery accurately is quite important. Let's say you're a Literature CV and you come across a poem that is interesting but that does not follow any of the rules/guidelines of poetry. In this situation, you'd likely not feature this piece as it does not accurately represent poetry.
Try to feature a variety of artwork so that you are representing the diversity of your gallery:
Let's say you're a Fan Art CV. Variety here, as in all galleries, is extremely important. You wouldn't just feature the same fandom every day, you would make sure to feature as many different mediums and fandoms as possible in order to represent your community as best as possible. When it comes to popular and unknown art, things aren't much different. As a CV, featuring quality artwork is your priority, and the focus is on the ART not how many views/comments/favorites it has. A DD is about the art, not the artist. So, you're browsing DA and you come across an amazing Fan Art piece, but wait, it has 800 favorites, and thousands of views! Well, nevermind, I can't feature that! WRONG. You can, and if the artwork is truly quality, unique, creative, and outstanding then it would be INSANE not to. The same goes for unknown art. Let's say you stumble upon that same Fan Art piece, but oh no! It has zero comments, and 15 favorites! Well, I guess that means it isn't that good, no point in featuring it! WRONG. As long as you're representing your gallery adequately, and featuring quality work, popularity shouldn't matter.
Feature a healthy amount of popular and unknown art:
In this last scenario, let's say you're a Fractal Art CV. For the most part, your gallery is fairly small. You have a close-knit community, some amazing artists, and some great work to feature. However, oftentimes you'll be featuring artwork that is already popular because of the nature of your gallery. It is small, and quality artwork is thus quickly noticed and appreciated! You'll eventually be engaged in a balancing act of paying close attention to how many very 'popular' pieces you have featured versus how many relatively 'unknown' ones you have. And this is important in any gallery, truly, whether big or small. In smaller ones, things are more challenging as there is less to choose from, so you are bound to feature artists that have been featured before and that are quite popular. Yet, the larger galleries of course go through the same process! As a CV, you wouldn't want to discriminate against any artist based on their level of recognition, you would want to focus on the quality of the art first and foremost.
Hopefully this "imagine yourself as a CV" game of sorts has helped you understand us and our choices better. Here are some questions for us to discuss:
Does it bother you when already 'popular' artwork is featured as a Daily Deviation? Why?
Do you notice it when 'unknown' artwork is featured?
What do you think you would do as a Community Volunteer?
It depends. Once there was a period of time about 6 or 7 years ago a former CV featured constantly featured Pokémon fan art as DD almost every 2nd day. That's what I found sad and kinda bothering.