DeviantArt is eight years old, and for us this means contest time! There are all sorts of cool birtday contests to participate in. Below are some of my favorites:

The 8th Letter of the Alphabet
This digital art contest is simply about illustrating the letter H. With a deadline of two weeks and some really cool prizes, it's my first choice to play.

8 Legged Freaks
If you are into Nature/Macro photography, this contest will be right up your alley. It's about taking photos of creatures with eight legs. I think creativity is the key here, so I won't submit spider pics... The one month deadline gives plenty of time to think of cool ideas.

8 colors for 8 years.
This is an interesting vector art contest, where one has to come up with a DA/8/birthday theme using only one of the provided 8-color swatches. This one is a bit short on the deadline - Aug. 15 - so I'm not sure I'll participate, but still worth a look.

8 Days a Week
A weird fan-art contest. One has to pick a Beatles song title/lyric as the theme of the artwork, and gotta be relevant to DA's 8th birthday. This one also has a short deadline (same as the previous one). Well... maybe.

Anyway, these are my favorite ones. Will you participate in any of these too? Or different ones? It's gonna be exciting times, a great opportunity to get to know fellow artists and make friends!

It's always been my opinion that conveying pure emotions is the most beautiful thing an artpiece can do. It's also probably the most challenging aspect of art - at least it is for me. So I'm always delighted when I find a masterpiece that does it well. Like the other day when I found this beautiful pencil drawing titled Roaring for Help, by *Wolfattwilight The raw power and emotion radiating from that picture, expressed in a perfect pose and proportions, makes it one of the most superb drawings I've ever seen! Here, take a look: