Art is in the air

[pebblerocker]

The last five years of NaArMaMo seem to have had an effect on me: my brain has been trained to associate cold weather with creativity. Yesterday I started on drawing a picture on the computer, learning about how to use layers and things. I have a sort of a story and it works better as a picture, and since it has several people in it I would struggle greatly without a photo reference (kindly posed for by family members, one standing on a chair holding a bicycle helmet) so learning how to make computer pictures is going to make things easiest. There are tutorials around which I've learnt some hints from even though they tend to use a lot of words I don't know.

And today Dreamwidth launched the first version of a new image hosting feature which even free accounts will be able to use. I hope there's enough space for a month's worth of art, because I'd love to have somewhere to upload NaArMaMo pictures that's guaranteed not to vanish or be "improved" beyond all usability like the last few hosts I've tried. Exciting!!

Comments

[pebblerocker]

I used Flickr for an August or two, but they made it harder and harder to get the image URL for embedding and started putting in stuff about how it was against their terms of service to embed pictures instead of linking to them, so I'd like to move away from there and get something easier to use. Also it has the vibe of being a place to upload photos that you took, not pencil sketches you drew, and not pictures someone else took to be embedded elsewhere for purposes of criticism and review. Flickr seems to work fine for Ravelry though!

Imageshack put me off by putting porn ads next to the picture I wanted to see. I have adblocker but I'm not going to store my images there and subject anyone else to seeing that. Photobucket put me off by having a very cluttered, unattractive interface for viewing other people's photos, and by asking me which US state I live in on the sign-up form with no "none of the above" option.

Deviantart drove me away by becoming ever more complex and unwieldy until pages no longer loaded completely until the fifth try, if at all, and the categorisation system became too intricate and difficult to navigate especially when nothing worked on the first go. It is at least explicitly a place to upload art in any medium. Now that I have a faster computer and connection I may give it another shot.

I have heard that Picasa is easy to use, and also heard paranoia from people who don't want Google to own their entire lives ;)

[vilakins]

Ravelry is why I have a Flickr account; makes it easy. I had no trouble using it for naarmamo that time, but it certainly looks as if Picasa is the way to go.