No, not you. I'm extremely appreciative (and, I must admit, still surprised) by the numbers of you who honor me by watching me here.

{rant on}
But  Jelethorim, who I don't know and haven't interacted with before today, hit one of my hot buttons when he commented on a journal posting by  Jocarra, who I also don't know except for my interactions with her on a commission she did for me a while back. He took issue with the price that the artist was charging for her commissions, and it set me off.

Really, people... artists pour their time and talent and passion into the work they do. If we're lucky, some of them let us tap into all of that to create art that we get to shape and direct. I find the prices that a some artists charge for that opportunity to be ridiculously low.

Look at the banner for this site (I'm obviously confident enough in the banner selection process that I think that this challenge will endure). How much time and effort do you think went into that? Now imagine that instead of being driven by the current holiday or season, that all that effort was directed by you. Isn't that worth a few bucks?

I know that times are tough right now and that people who would otherwise want to support artists through commissions don't have a lot to give. But that's just as true for the artists who would take them. If we want to raise the bar of quality in the furry art world; if we want to encourage those artists who are starting to draw their first felines or clicking on OpenCanvas for the first time, then we need to take steps to end the idea that you have to be starving to be an artist.

No one wants to pay more for something they can get for less, but the "artists" in question aren't the rock bands that you're paying hundreds of dollars to go see in concert or the megaplex that charges you $5 for a sip of soda. These are people in our community who are sharing their love of prose or ink or digital graphics with us. They deserve our thanks and they deserve our support.

{rant off}

So I'll ask this of all of you in this, my first really serious journal posting here. Please find an artist that you respect and admire and go and make a journal post or a shout on their page or an unsolicited comment about how great they are. Then tell your friends to do the same. I'd love to see an artist appreciation meme spread through the community here as quickly as the latest icon craze :-P

Thank you, and thanks to Jelethorim for inadvertently kicking this off.

-GT