So I joined DeviantArt a little bit less than 4 years ago? I came to deviantArt from the mywarriorcats forum (it's since been renamed TeenRPG). There were several pretty amazing artists on that site. I joined in like 6th grade, so I was about 12 years old. I thought my art was pretty cool, but actually it was crap. I guess that's how we all look back on old artwork XD. After seeing all the amazing artists here on dA, I told myself that I wanted to be as good as them. So I found myself focusing more and more on my art.
I guess I haven't been super active all these years, but I have been pretty consistently posting most of my stuff. And it's always fun to go back and see how far my art has come in all that time. So even if I'm missing out on the "social" part of social media, this site has still been a great tool to track my progress all this time.
I think my favorite thing about this site is the communities. Mostly the ACEO trading communities. During my time here, I've sent and received dozens of ACEO cards from all over the world and that's something that's just absolutely amazing. Like, I would have never been put in touch with all of these people if it hadn't been for dA.
And just to see how far my art has come, here is the first thing I ever uploaded about four years ago:
And here's where my art is now:
As you can see, I've come a long way. I'm still not completely satisfied with my art, and I still haven't really developed a cohesive "style" yet, but I'm getting there. As they say, you never really stop learning and you never stop getting better. I hope one day, I can look back on the art that I've posted here today and tell myself, "I was okay back then, but I've come so far since then."