Similar happens to me from time to time as well; I've found that every few months or so, something like this will happen to me, but I'm just assuming that these are "new" people who haven't seen my work before, and decided to favorite a bunch of stuff. And again, it's almost always only my Chipmunk stuff that people like.
As for not receiving new deviantWATCHes, I think it's either one of two things... either these people favorite a lot of artists' work to get their attention in hopes that they'll receive the watches, or they simply use dA strictly for favorite artwork.
I agree, I know a number of people "in real life" who go on DA just to favourite stuff myself. I mean, favourites means a lot to me, and I really appreciate them, but when they :+fav: everything and don't dewatch you back... I don't know, maybe my expectations are too high. I reckon I have a few people on my devwatch who have never acknowledged my gallery, or at least never comment/fav, but again... maybe I'm just expecting too much (but hey, it does make you wonder about who sincere members are), a close friend of mine will never comment or favourite/comment on my stuff unless I somehow mention her in the comments.
Do you ever have the problem (I swear it's an error) where people favorite your work, you check it (I usually try to look at the artwork of people who favorite my stuff) and they don't actually have it? I had one guy who added me to their watch months ago, but he was never listed. Thankfully he added me again.
Oh yeah, I had that once on my old account. Thankfully though, on this one, so far so good.
Sometimes I have the opposite problem of what you stated. Sometimes the only favorites I get are FROM my watchers. Sometimes I get watchers who don't even favorite any of my stuff (presumably to get me to watch them back).
That's what I get, I reckon. Not always, but yeah. I have a group of really lovely watchers, but I do believe that some just decided to watch me due to my interests (or, as I said, when I got a premium account, I noticed on the visitor thingy that I have a few members that looked at my page sometimes more than once a day, and I think I watched some of them so they might've been thinking, "oh, now that she knows I've been looking at her page, I should add her". But I could be wrong here, I guess).
Again my BIGGESt problem is the fact that I have so much stuff that's obscure that I get little favorites from them. Yet, when I do something more well known, I get only several more favorites. I swear people only like my for my Internet Meme pieces (i.e. Robotnik).
Not that I'm ungrateful for faves, but I can definitely relate to you there. It often varies for me, I just looked at my gallery stats and it turns out my stuff altogether has been faved 558 times, which I'm quite happy about, actually, if not a little surprised. And, as I've probably mentioned before, the one that got the most faves (46) was an average photo of a /shoe/. It's not /terrible/, but it is over-exposed, colours are too flat... nah, doesn't make sense to me.
I think I'm in the same boat as you, Dr.Tooth. I often get a number of people favourting my rough sketches, but it's my pencil drawings and my watercolour paintings that I wish got more recognition.Even something like
this, which took me no time at all, but I'm quite happy with the end result, I just wish my more obscure stuff got acknowledged.
Also, I gotta mention this, because I'd really like a second opinion, am I the only one who notices that so many portraits (hand-done) on DA, generally the ones that get the most faves, are traced? I'm sure I'm not, but to me it seems a little wrong, esp. if the original pic didn't belong to the person. If they must, I reckon they should at least say where they've gotten it from. And also people just uploading pics that they've found on the internet, that don't belong to them... I don't know, for an art site, it just doesn't seem right. I understand maybe adding something, if you mention the source, but lately the faves have been going to people who just upload images from another site. :/ Could be just me, but I find it... I don't know... unfair? Sort of. Ish. I just don't think it's right on a website for art, unless you at least mention the source/done in moderation. Or something like that.