Case of Cooties...

Google has asked a bunch of illustrators for free samples to grace a new project of theirs, but many have turned 'em down. Nonetheless, there'll be plenty who'll take the bait for the "exposure". If nothing else, the Internet sure gives exposure.

What I'm concerned about is that for creative people, perhaps artists more than writers, Internet technology is allowing us the opportunity to Cut Our Own Throats. That's where COOTies comes from.

It's not a game anymore.

The fact is that web surfers want everything free. They already paid a bundle for the computer, so why pay more? There's innumerable artists out there now offering prints, giclees, t-shirts, calendars etc. in an effort to buy some groceries, and ya know what? NOBODY BUYS THEM. Or hardly anyone. Why stick something on the wall when you can just stick your face to a computer screen?

It's not for nothing they call it "Windows"--and any decent prison cell should have one.

My main site gets respectable hits all the time, but again--visitors want to be entertained free of charge, which I have been doing, though I also have a "donate" option, which amazingly has actually been used.

Y'know, if you pass a beggar in public, you may feel obliged to dig in your pocket for a quarter, but if he and everyone else is blind or invisible, why bother? Go get yer free entertainment.

The kind of thing computers are good at--soulless, inhuman rendering.

The other problem is "Digital Art". I think we know by now that millions or more people who never would've learned anatomy or painting now consider themselves "artists" and are all over the landscape. It's hard to tell them apart because while a real brushstroke identifies the artist like a signature, digital tools resist personalization. You have to try and ID by subject matter, because there's nothing else.

Also, the medium itself tends toward the inhuman due to its reliance on number-crunching. It can create smoother gradients than any human hand ever can or could, but so what? Do we really want humanity sucked out of Art?

The sty in the modern eye that identifies the artist.

This also affects perceptions of what's now called "Traditional Art". I know that many viewers now prefer the slickness of digital to muddy paint and hair-stick art. The trouble is it's not "smooth" enough, and worse, it actually betrays the fact that a human made it.

Quick--who made this picture, and does it matter?

People that know little about Art usually want the brushstrokes to go away. Looseness bothers them. Greg Cwiklik, a critic for the Comics Journal, who claims to be an artist too but hides his work, bemoaned Frazetta's "meaningless brushstrokes" in some backgrounds, showing ignorance of a cardinal rule of painting: unimportant areas should be under-rendered.

Antiseptic techniques for a spoiled public.

The unwashed public prefers slick, and they want it delivered to their feet; basically, they won't work for anything. They want a big, fluffy, sparkly, nutritionless birthday cake. No work, and the lazier people get. Eloi.

More and more artists, more virtual venues to sell their work, and less of it actually selling.

I remember reading studies about what TV watching once did to kids' intelligence and IQs, but who's studying computer usage? Probably someone, but the results obviously don't interest anyone nowadays in the midst of the Free Feeding Frenzy.

Maybe the goal of digital art on the internet is to completely erase the individual identity of the artist, because the public really doesn't want it.