Why I left Deviant Art

It was a short romance, lasting about two years. The inset picture may give you a clue as to why I packed up my stall and left.

Whilst there's no doubt that DA is the 'Jupiter' of the digital and contemporary art solar system, gravitationally sucking up millions of would be and established artists, or that there are very many amazing artists showing their work on the site, it's not generally the kind of art favoured by those that moderate, or the majority of site followers that now make up the audience.

The artists that I respected and downright admired when I joined, all stopped posting in the last six months: In fact they stopped visiting the site altogether; one even posted that they'd lost motivation and said goodbye in a sort of 'art suicide note'.

Take a look at today's, 'What's Hot? screenshot and you may begin to understand what's happening. Manga, Manga, Manga, fan art, monsters and titillation (Manga) and people dressing up as Manga characters. Manga has it's place as does all of this artwork, but it now represents the majority of what gets pushed, day in, day out on this huge site. And Manga is what? A standardised format where artists are essentially trying to invent a better mousetrap - and for creativity that's pretty much a death trap. Much of it in my opinion (what do I know?) is completely banal, 'me too', tripe. And that's not to disparage individual artists, because some of them produce brilliant stuff, even if I am a bit sick of seeing it and having it rammed into my eyeballs.

No, it's more a criticism of the DA moderators who seem to have lost their way and plummeted down the populist rabbit hole, chasing a Manga rabbit. So if you're hoping to get noticed on the 'dark side', you'd better sharpen up your cartooning tools, because for the moment at least you may just find that your erstwhile efforts are lost amongst a horde of increasingly desperate Sonic and Manga wannabes.

And that's why FineArtAmerica stands to make a massive impact. It's called 'balance'.