I apologize to anyone that was watching this account these past few years. Long story short, when I first joined the fandom I was a dragon, but when I joined the game Second Life, they had no good dragon avatars. Rather than running around as a human until I found one, I took on a wolf avatar, and eventually it grew on me. I had a bit of an identity crisis over it and decided to separate the accounts, and Valthonis was born! He quickly became my main fursona and my Dalvenge accounts went into disuse. Originally I kept this account as it is as a place to display artwork I drew, and intended to post art others drew on my new FA account valthonis. However, I fell out of drawing and this account has done nothing but collect dust. Its going to continue to do so, but first, I have decided I want to share all the old artwork I acquired while I was a dragon, so either tonight, or hopefully soon, I will be dumping a lot of dragon-y goodness on this account! BUT, once done, I don't foresee myself ever posting anything else on this account, so if you still want to follow the me me, head on over to  valthonis as that will be my exclusive account. But for now, enjoy some years-old pieces of art that have been sitting on my computer, unshared except to those whom I have called friend and given direct links to.

Alright, so far I've avoided posting art in my gallery thats done by others because I feel a bit weird with doing so... But I'd like to hear what my friends think about it. The reason I've not done it is simply.. its not work done by me. I kinda feel that a gallery should be original work that one has done himself/herself. If I posted a piece done by someone else, even if I give them full credit for it, someone is going to stumble on that picture, think it rocks, favorite, possibly watch me. That's not my piece though, that favorite should be given to the wonderful artist that did the picture, not for the recipient of said picture.

I don't feel someone should have a lot of watchers and favorites because A) they are popular, people doing free art for them, or B) they are rich, able to afford a lot of commissions. We should be judged by our own skill!


Now.. the flip side is... Not everyone has an FA. And things like badges would never be seen by others online unless the recipient takes a scan of it and posts it somewhere for others viewing enjoyment. Once an image is posted in your gallery, someone might stumble upon it, see who its done by, and follow the link/name to find the artist and check out their other stuff, giving them the favorites/watches they deserve.

And its also nice to have all of one's gift art/commissions in one place, giving a friend a simple link to check them all out, rather than having to find webspace to host them, or send them each image seperately on AIM or MSN.

There have been several times I see a very nice looking icon for someone that comments on a picture, but following the link back to their gallery, I'm disappointed to find the icon was made from a crop of a commission, and there's nothing remotely similar in their gallery...... Oooor, I go to their gallery, find out who did the picture the icon was cropped from, and check out the artist's other works. x_x

So what are your views on this?

Is there a way to turn off watching artists journals? I have been unable to locate an options panel on FA that lets me stop watching an artist's journal but continue to watch their gallery.. DA has it...Is there one here? Thanks.

Yeeep, used this just to look at naughty pictures long enough, I'm finally updating this thing. I plan on moving all my drawings over to his and leaving all my metalsmithing work on DA. I doubt I'll be updating this much beyond the initial first pictures but I will start to watch friends with it and try to keep up with new postings.