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Debating with myself
10 years ago
General
"We are made to persist."
I'm currently going back and forth with myself over something I wouldn't mind having some input on.
I'm seriously considering doing some heavy-duty cleaning up in my gallery, and as part of that I'm trying to decide whether to keep any of my adult stuff up here. I've always had mixed feelings about my mature artwork, and while I'm really happy with only an exceptionally few of my finished works, I'm least happy with the porn, almost invariably.
The other part of this is that I'm going to be filling in some paperwork soon that would theoretically allow me to become a sponsor for the high school age teens at my church. It's something I've been interested in doing for a long time, and I was recently approached by the youth director to see if I'd fill a position that my friend left vacant when he moved back home to Michigan. I'm concerned about what my presence online might look like. To be fair, it's a New Thought church, and what I do as an adult is my business and mine alone. If I were asked, I would have no problem with admitting that some of my income is from doing erotic artwork, and I don't think anyone would so much as bat an eye. However, out there in the real world, more people know my as Nomi or Nominus Expers than know me by any other name, so if someone were to look me up they'd have a pretty easy time finding my DA and FA galleries. While someone underage would have to be committing a crime themselves in order to view my adult works, it still gives me pause.
I know I want to clean some things out anyway. There's a lot of old stuff that doesn't really represent me anymore, and while I'm all about honoring my journey as an artist, I think it might be wise to find other ways of doing so, such as a .zip file of my art archives available on request, or something along those lines.
What do you guys think?
I'm seriously considering doing some heavy-duty cleaning up in my gallery, and as part of that I'm trying to decide whether to keep any of my adult stuff up here. I've always had mixed feelings about my mature artwork, and while I'm really happy with only an exceptionally few of my finished works, I'm least happy with the porn, almost invariably.
The other part of this is that I'm going to be filling in some paperwork soon that would theoretically allow me to become a sponsor for the high school age teens at my church. It's something I've been interested in doing for a long time, and I was recently approached by the youth director to see if I'd fill a position that my friend left vacant when he moved back home to Michigan. I'm concerned about what my presence online might look like. To be fair, it's a New Thought church, and what I do as an adult is my business and mine alone. If I were asked, I would have no problem with admitting that some of my income is from doing erotic artwork, and I don't think anyone would so much as bat an eye. However, out there in the real world, more people know my as Nomi or Nominus Expers than know me by any other name, so if someone were to look me up they'd have a pretty easy time finding my DA and FA galleries. While someone underage would have to be committing a crime themselves in order to view my adult works, it still gives me pause.
I know I want to clean some things out anyway. There's a lot of old stuff that doesn't really represent me anymore, and while I'm all about honoring my journey as an artist, I think it might be wise to find other ways of doing so, such as a .zip file of my art archives available on request, or something along those lines.
What do you guys think?
"That's how we find out who we are."
Do You Like Metal?
Art I owe people:
wildmark- Ongoing project
mitsozuka- Reference Sheet
foxystallion- Ongoing project
Do You Like Metal?
Art I owe people:
wildmark- Ongoing project
mitsozuka- Reference Sheet
foxystallion- Ongoing project
As to most of the people in my spiritual community not batting an eye? If I brought up being otherkin to someone, a lively and engaged discussion would ensue with about four out of ten people, with the other six nodding politely with an attitude ranging from tolerant dismissal to noncommittal acceptance. It's a -very- hippie church.
What others think of me is only important insofar as they have the power to actually inconvenience me or bring me to harm. While it's a shame we live in a sex-negative society, we do, until we collectively change the majority attitude to one that is sex-positive. It's actually my intention to bring that to the table with a discussion group for the 18-30 age group, which i don't consider too wide an age disparity for people to have some common ground while having a good range of perspectives. It's a question of generating interest and finding a suitable day and where people can actually show up. I want to do this in addition to taking on the youth sponsorship role because I want the teenagers who are old enough to participate in adult topics of discussion to have a venue where they can do so in a positive, spiritual context with people who are interested in offering guidance and support instead of judgement.
Now, my opinion on sharing nice things is that they are meant to be shared. Rather than discourage sharing, I discourage criticism UNLESS the criticism is necessary and can be delivered in a kind manner which is backed by factual points of reference to SOLVE PROBLEMS IN TECHNIQUE. Scathing criticism might be fun to listen to and create, but it discourages wonderful things from entering the world.
I post some of the fruits of my creative effort to the internet for people to enjoy because I like bringing things to the table for people to enjoy. I get a kick out of people being happier because of something I did. My original reasons weren't even that good; I did it because people kept asking me to, and because it's easier to give someone a link than to lug around a portfolio. I could probably claim that it's also because this is one of half a dozen things I do that people sometimes like to pay me to do for them specifically but I can't remember the last time furaffinity was the reason someone chose to commission me. The overwhelming majority of my pay comes from face-to-face interactions or from people I've worked with before. It's interesting that you bring it up, honestly, because I'm also very aware that by drawing porn and posting it online I'm operating in the same vein as many other kinds of drug dealer, I just happen to be mostly giving it away because my drug is just a catalyst for chemical reactions in the body and brain of the user. As with any recreational substance there are differing levels of quality as well as differences to match taste, and not only that, there are contexts in which the substance is enjoyed in a healthy way, and contexts in which it is abused. If I'm going to continue to produce and display erotic artwork I'd really prefer to move in a direction where I'm producing stuff that's really highly refined and might actually evoke more than sexual arousal in the viewer; work that might stand on its own as fine art but which is also hot enough to fap to if one is so inclined.
I'm really just trying to raise the bar in my life as a whole; and I'd like to become a little less reproachable in the process.
Really, sometimes I worry about such things, but then I remember that everything here that is adult is tagged and flagged and simply cannot be seen by someone unless they A. have an FA account and B. set it to NSFW and C. searched out my art specifically. Which means if they confronted me about it, I could equally confront them "why are you on FA looking at furry porn???"