Love Paint as much as I do?

ENJOY~




If there's a word to describe the way this ad. makes me feel, I haven't found it yet...

Next stop... the Flickr zone....

Sorry I haven't posted much in the past few days. I've been lost on Flickr. If you aren't familiar with the site, it's a place where you upload all of your pictures and get to know other people by the pictures they post. It has another, "underground" use, though and that's what I've been doing. There's a collection of artists there showing their work and networking in different ways. I'm particularly drawn to the areas where people post pages from their sketchbooks, and I posted a few drawings from mine. I want to make the most of the service before someone fucks it up the way Google did YouTube.

YouTube gained popularity because it was a place to post snippets of stuff like the Daily show and the Colbert Report. Then Google bought it and unsubbed all the people that uploaded the content that brought people there in the first place. It went from a great underground form of communication to being a commercial enterprise concerned with Digital Media Rights and advertising. Ugh. In much the same way, Flickr has become a place for certain artists to communicate with each other. There are other sites for that purpose, just as you can get Daily Show clips at Comedy Central, but it isn't the same. The sharing aspect isn't there, or it doesn't flow as naturally.

Anyway, Flickr is not fond of the artists. They want strictly photographers. They aren't kicking people off the site, but they are leaving people out of the search engines somehow. Before my usual critics start yelling that it IS a commercial enterprise and they can do anything they want, stop and listen for a minute. This isn't about what they can do and it isn't about rights. It's about the Commons springing up organically in unusual places and how companies would garner more support if they'd ease up and go with the flow. There's more than one way to be in a band - you can be a whiny bitch like Metallica that pisses and moans over every penny, or you can be a laid-back cultural icon like the Grateful Dead and nurture your fan base. Money is only one measure of value. There's something to be said for generosity and caché.

Anyway, I'm having fun cruising people's sketch books and related sites about pens and pencils and Moleskines, and I'm learning a lot about art, about people, about what I like and don't like. I learn from looking at the way others do their art, and maybe somebody will gain something from seeing mine, meager though it might be. It's fun to how differently people can use something as simple as black ink or a box of paint.

I also spent the day watching the HEX marathon on BBC America - damn! Ancient curses, lesbian ghosts, Witches, fallen angels and cute guys... it's everything Buffy should have been but never was. I just hope they don't screw it up - they may have killed one of the main characters already and I'm having flashbacks of the way VANISHED killed my beloved and committed suicide in one swift act of stupidity.

What are you all doing this week end?