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The site has over 150 million images which have been uploaded by its over 15 million members, making deviantArt “the largest art platform today”. Members of deviantArt may leave comments and critiques on individual deviation pages, allowing the site to be called “a peer evaluation application”. Along with textual critique, deviantArt now offers the option to leave a small picture as a comment. This can be achieved using an option of deviantArt Muro, which is a browser-based drawing tool that devaintArt has developed and hosts. It is simple, with eight free brushes available for anyone’s use, although only members of deviantArt can save their work as deviations. Another feature of Muro is what is called “Redraw”; it records the user as they draw their image, and then the user can post the entire process as a film deviation.
Individual deviations are displayed on their own pages, with a list of statistical information about the image, as well as place for uploader and member comments, and ‘sharing’ through other social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). These deviations are required to be organized into categories when a member uploads an image, and this facilitates the deviantArt’s search engine in finding images concerning similar topics.
Individual members can also organize their own deviations into folders, allowing further organization on their personal pages. These personal member pages, or profiles, show a member’s personally uploaded deviations and journal postings. Journals are like a personal blog accompanying a member’s profile page, and topic coverage is up to the member; some use it to talk of their personal or art-related lives, others use it to spread awareness or marshal support for a cause. Also displayed are a member’s “favourites”, or collection of other users’ images from deviantArt, which the member can save to a folder of its own. Another thing to be found on the profile page is a member’s “watchers”; a member may add another member to their “watch list” in order to be notified when that member uploads something. The watcher notifications are gathered with other notices in a member’s Message Center, other notices being when other users comment on that member’s deviations, or when the member receives favorites.
In order to communicate on a more private level, “Notes” can be sent between individual members, similar to an email within the site. Other opportunities for communication among members are deviantArt’s forums and chatrooms; chatrooms being for group instant messaging, and forums being for more structured, long-term discussions.
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