Recommended Sites for Amateur Artists
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Stupid, stupid!
D'OH! I should have posted this as a guide entry, rather than a journal entry. Stupid, stupid, stupid! *author continues berating herself* Anyhoo, here it is with a nicer layout...
The Actual Entry
If you're an amateur artist like I am (at least, I think I can draw...) and wish to display your art online, there are several ways to go about doing so. First and probably the easiest, join an online gallery!
Examples:
- Side 7: There's no judging process, and as long as you follow the guidelines, your art stays up. Great site layout with many options and friendly staff. Categories for art include furry, anime, sonic fanart, 3D-rendered art, and a miscellanious category. One caveat: the server is slow and may crash altogether.
- Elfwood: The site also includes libraries of fantasy/sci-fi stories as well as fantasy/sci-fi art galleries. Again, your art will not be rejected on the basis of skill, but generally, it must fit into either a fantasy or sci-fi category. Read the submission guidelines for more detailed information.
- Yerf: It seems this gallery is mostly professional furry artwork, or work from people currently in art school. There is a judging process, which is incredibly slow, and they're quite selective of who they allow to join. Sometimes it seems like they're on crack or something when they actually get around to judging - I know of several good to great artists who have been rejected on the basis of small flaws (if they're even flaws) in their work, whereas people whose work is...mediocre, shall we say...have been allowed to join. But, it's up to you - take the risk and apply, after all, Yerf is probably the most well-known and selective clean furry art gallery on the net. If you get in, the effort is well worth the prestige.
If all else fails...
(You don't even have to be an amateur artist to do this, obviously...) Start your own art site! Several free website servers (you'd have to be living in a hole for the past three decades not to know of these):
- Geocities: I used to have an account here (then they removed it, freaking jerkheads), and last time I checked, they gave you 11 megs, though they may have upped it.
- Angelfire: less memory, more popup ads
- Xoom: unlimited memory, but has ugly Xoom navbars
- Tripod: Never used this one, but I know it has lots of popup ads.
- Fortunecity: Never used this one either.
Most or all of these sites have ads of some sort, usually in popup form, but they also have online HTML editors. However, the ads tend to get on my nerves, so I actually use Virtualave which gives you about 20 megs of space, a CGI-bin, SSI access, and several other perks. The only downside is that you have to FTP, but that's easily overcome by downloading CuteFTP (when I find the address I'll post it).
If you are going to run an exclusively furry (anthropomorphic) art site, Furnation is a free webserver for furry sites, and furry sites only. Be careful, it's not censored like Geocities, so there are sites of...uh...questionable material, specifically yiff or spooge art (furry porn...>_<).</P>
Help on building websites: HTMLGoodies.com