Welcome Quincygirl,
I'm glad you joined us and are trying to learn all you can about hamsters. People that own then need to be more educated about them and some of us need to know a bunch to simply educate those people, so maybe soon you will be the teacher and offering advice to other hammy owners.
To post images you need to use BBcode the image tag looks like this [img]IMAGE%20URL%20HERE[/img]
I don't think the deviant art links would work unless you could just find the image source url for the pictures. Some people have personal websites they build for free that hosts their images, or hopefully someone here can suggest a good photo hosting site such as Photobucket for you.
You can also upload your own avatar if you like by going to your profile, it can be found at the top of the forum just under the forum logo. If you don't have a picture click on gallery in your profile to see the available icons/avatars.