I miss old deviantart. When it wasn't drowning in ai plagiarism slop and reveling in it. When they didn't sell out and alienate their artist base by incorporating ai scraping databases. When it wasn't mask off pro-israli and pro-genocide (I believe because deviantart was owned by Wix? iirc). When you could actually post art on there and people would engage and comment on it, even if it was 'bad' art, because people recognize other people trying to get better at their craft and want to encourage that.

I miss the fun custom animated stamps and fun little emojis used on the site. I miss the old layouts and free widgets and elements that got retroactively put behind a paywall because nothing is sacred in capitalism.

Yes, even old deviantart had its problems, the site has /always/ had a problem with uncensored niche fetish art being posted brazenly because well 'technically it's not breaking rules no one is naked or getting overtly fucked' but it's still fetish art and therefore should be marked as adult content.

I deleted my deviantart when the ai shit came around, but I still miss the good resources I followed. Good stock and pose reference accounts, brush packs, tutorials.

Artstation is just as heinous about the ai slop. Add that I've experienced scammers using artstation to mass email artists with fake job opportunities, it left a very sour taste in my mouth.

The internet is getting so hostile for creatives, for visual artists, for writers, and it's concerning. The cop-out advice of 'make your own website' ignores that search-engine optimization makes it so that personal websites get buried under ads and the popular websites, therefore making it so the personal websites get way less traffic than the social media sites. Starting up a new website to fill the niche deviantart and artstation should fill takes a lot of time and money and work, servers cost money to maintain, and even if you have all of that, it may never get enough traffic and new people to become a real competitor to the big sites. Suffering.

Yisrael Dror Hemed, Ravid, 2019. Oil on canvas, 170 x 80 cm.

Playdate♥️

Shulamit Near - Two chairs by the Dead Sea. Oil on canvas, 35×27.3 cm

Shulamit Near - Beit Ha'emek, the stage, morning. Oil on canvas, 60×35 cm

Shulamit Near - Mount of Olive, Jerusalem, morning. Oil on canvas, 65×36 cm

Adam Cohn, Yuval by the Table, 2020.

Natasha Brilliantova, Orange wire. 35x25 cm. Watercolor and acrylic on paper.

Yisrael Dror Hemed, Aluma, 2018. Oil on canvas, 140 x 80 cm.

Nathan Pernick, Notebook. Oil on Canvas, 120x50 cm.

Natasha Brilliantova, Water Tanks. Oil painting, 70×120 cm.

Natasha Brilliantova, Conversation. 24x22 cm. Watercolor and acrylic on paper.

Tal Shochat, Olive on an Old Carpet, 2017. c print, 85x100 cm.

Natasha Brilliantova, Still Life, 2001. Oil on canvas, Painting, 60X100 cm.

Natan Pernick, Plastic Bag. Oil on Canvas, 80x60 cm.

Natasha Brilliantova, Pomegranates in a Studio, 2011. Oil on canvas, Painting, 80X60 cm.