A news series featuring art selected by me. There will be a wide range of themes and genres covered. In addition, there will be periodic interviews and artist spotlights.

If you like this article, please add it to your favorites to help spread the love for the art and artists within.

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Daily Features

_{On my profile page, I feature a new deviation every day (or two or three). The piece is usually something that caught my eye. Could be an amazing digital painting, a fun stamp, a quick photograph that made me smile, perhaps a piece for a weekly theme, whatever. However, it moved me enough to share it with my visitors. Below is a list of the artists which I featured during November 2012. I am showcasing different pieces from their gallery in the hope of showing them a bit more love. If you would like to see the original piece I featured of each of these artists, please visit this folder.}

*MissC23




~RapidHeartMovement




~k-d-art




*BrookeGillette




*DaXXe




~SuziKute




*Smoludozerka




~natalievonraven




~sharandula




`Tajii-chan




*IanSchofield




*Jsaren




`anako-art




$fourteenthstar




=ColorMyMemory




*LuigiL




=Lilith-the-5th




~Etherealopenskies




~raymundlee




*Arenheim




~elphieofkiamoko




~Kavel-WB




~railrunnermiranda

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Spotlight Interview

_{In this series, I hope to introduce the community to some artists who have been around dA for a while, but are still relativity unknown. The interviews are meant to be short and sweet. I encourage you to check out the artist's full gallery and add them to your devWatch.}

-- This issue, we talk to digital artist and author, `justMANGO

Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself and your dA life? (You can use this question to plug any groups or off-dA projects you may have.)

Sure thing. I'm the mango that everyone attempts to eat within 5 seconds of me walking into any populated chatroom, but sadly I'm reserved for self-consumption when hunger gets the best of me. I am very proud of myself, because it's generally fairly rare that mangoes make it all the way through university. I look forward to the day when I become imbued with the wisdom of academic  philosophy as to become a transcendental mango. So much for that side of me. My life on dA is extremely diverse. In various stages of my life, I have been interested in everything from drawing/illustrations, graphic/web design, photography, literature and more. I have been very enthused about bettering my abilities to draw digitally, but sadly my very busy life of pretending to be oranges leave me with very little time for practical and continuous training. I am currently most active in two groups, #toronto, that hosts regular devMEETs so that I can hang with some of the really awesome people in the community who lives close to me, and #Deep-Thinkers, a literature-focused group promoting free and various thought.


What would you say your main artform is? Secondary?

That's a really hard question, especially since I'm a bit of a Jack of all trades, master of none. The art form that I enjoy the most is digital painting, second to that is traditional illustrations with pigment liners and coloured pencils. I wouldn't say that I'm very good at them, but I do enjoy them the most. But when it comes down to the art form that I most frequently rely on to convey ideas, it's likely to be prose literature. I love to write both fictionally and academically, but the burning thrill of it has mellowed over the years into a warm, soothing sensation.


When did you start pursuing your art? What prompted you to?

I have wrote fiction ever since I was very little, but everything else began when I was in my early teens. (That was when all my pulpy goodness was still fresh and juicy. Now I'm all dried up. You don't want to eat me.) I discovered dA seven years ago, and I was entranced by the talented people here. I tried my hand at drawing, but the lack of improvement turned me away from that for a while. In the four-or-so years that I did very little drawing, I worked a lot in graphic and web designing. I'm a bit rusty at that now, but I'm not too bothered. The moon has phases, and so does life.


What is your favorite piece in your gallery at the moment?

I very rarely think of my own gallery in that manner, but I guess in actuality there are pieces that I favour more than others. It's hard to reduce it to one single favorite piece, but I've always liked this a lot. It's a relatively simple piece and some of its lines are rather rough, but it has a lot of meaning for me. I drew it during a period of my life when things weren't going so well, and in fact, I relied on drawing/sketching/doodling a lot to calm myself then, and this is one of the best ones that came out. I really like the composition, the lines are rather nice despite being imperfect, and it's a fairly accurate portrayal of myself at the time (when I was still more human than I am mango).




In general, what is your favorite thing to create (i.e. fan-art, poetry, etc) ?

Stories! I love to create stories. If I were better at drawing I would draw comics. I'm a fiction writer so I have a lot of characters, and it's my guilty and private pleasure to make them do all sorts of really awesome and bizarre things that I can't do in reality. I write (and draw, sometimes) about them a lot, but most of them don't survive the quality massacre as to become a dA submission.


Just for fun question: What is your favorite movie?

Gosh, I'm a huge movie fan so there's almost an endless list of films I absolutely love. Must I pick one? Howl's Moving Castle because I want to retain that bit of me that will forever remain a (human) child with fantastic hopes and dreams.


Time to spread the love. Who are 3 artists you feel could use more love? Tell us why you love them. (please select one piece from each of the artist's gallery and send me the thumb)

~kelleybean86 is really talented and definitely deserves more love. Her style is very painterly, which I (and presumably a lot of others) really like. I am also a pretty big supporter of indie games and she is the artist for the upcoming indie title Crea, which I think also needs lots of love. (It's a really adorable 2D-sandbox-type game.) Here's a piece from her gallery to get you started:


Next is ~Brenna-yo. She's not super active all the time, but I don't think that's any reason to not give someone support and love for their work. There's a lot of photography around on dA, and because it's much harder to shine through with your own personal style with photography, it's very easy to get buried. Now ~Brenna-yo has, I think, a very distinctive way of capturing the world that is true to herself, and that is super awesome. Maybe it's me, but I think her photos are really pleasing to the eye and the mind in a very simplistic and minimalistic way. Here's a piece of hers that really reveals her style (guess what it is):



The last is ~Chanimur, someone extremely talented in an area that many people are unfamiliar with. Maps are art too, and doing cartography well is arguably far more difficult and technical than drawing a human with proper anatomy. I was once praised for making a semi-descent map, and well folks, here's the master that I bow down humbly to. Experience his superb-skills:



Final words?

`Mirz123 is made of pure awesome for being overall too totally awesome, and for letting me have this chance to write this massive wall of text.


Some of my picks from `justMANGO's gallery:

JuneIt was another summer. The air of June grew to be warmer and stickier; the smell of salted water seems so much stronger in the heat. With my shoes in my hand, I stepped over the hot sand in bare foot, occasionally kicking against a rock or two. Up ahead is the observation dock, extending far beyond the shoreline and high above the whooshing waves.
I looked up; there was not a single strand of cloud for miles, only the burning sun slowly cooking everyone below. People scattered over the beach and the dock, resting, chattering, and seeking for new discoveries on the horizon and in the sands. Everything was still the same, but ten years ago it

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Themed Feature

_{Recently, I ran a poll asking my watchers which of three portrait of my male original characters they liked best. It tickled me that the one with the beard won hands down. Beards get a bad rap--most people prefer clean-shaven. And while I'll admit, a smooth face is awesone, I happen to like facial hair. So, as a not to that, I am doing a special beard feature, centered around that keyword, as well as adding a few of my personal favorites.}

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Special Feature

_{I was working on this article while I was in the chat over at PizzaPixels and for fun, I asked the chat-goers to link me to some of their recent faves, as well as a piece of their own. This is what they came up with.:}


    Fool's HopeDay after day, each evening he would stand gazing into the far distance, to the North Horizon where  the shadows of three great peaks were dimly seen before they would dissolve into the black sky, the background that came with night. Day after day, each day his thoughts would stray, wander to Maitimo, wonder how he was, wonder what he was thinking of.

Turukáno was not surprised, but he could not suppress the anxiety he felt for his older brother. Findekáno would hardly come to dine with them unless he was asked to, rather wandering by the lakeshore, waiting, Turukáno supposed, for someone who would not be released, who would not return. Even To Linger“All of it is gone,” Celeborn said, staring out over the waves.
Oropher moved forward to stand next to him. “All of it? Amon Obel, Nan-tathren, even Menegroth itself? Surely the Valar kept some of it above the waves.”
Celeborn laughed, “Come now, surely you’ve realized that the Valar’s only care is for the Noldor? It took one of them to get the Valar to come and save us from Morgoth - if we can consider it saving, when they’ve destroyed our lands far beyond what even the Sons of Fëanor ever managed to do.”
“You are married to one of the Noldor, you do remember?” Normally, Oropher would have been far crueler about this. It irked him that Celeborn had ever married that woman, given how she had seemed to want to set herself up as a second Melian.
“Does that not merely mean that I’m in a better place to see what the Valar have really done? You are right, of course, parts of Beleriand did survive according to :thumb340735668:

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Spam

_{This section will be used to promote special events and such around dA that are close to my heart, as well as requested pimpage.}

Check back next time.

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Credits

<sub>A nod to the following people and resources which make this article possible:
Art selection: ~Xanderpus, =happy-gurl, =Eitvys200, ~TheRejectPhoenix, *LadyBrookeCelebwen, =ihateseptictanks, `Infinite-Heart
Logo graphic by `admx
Section bullets courtesy of Fatcow Hosting
CSS Skin by =Drake1
Custom journal coding and layout by `Ravenswd

Disclaimer: These features are done in the spirit of promoting the art of fellow deviants. Due to time restraints and the volume of art I feature, I cannot specifically ask permission of each artist before featuring. If I have showcased you or one of your pieces and you would prefer I not, please note me and I will be happy to remove it.</sub>