I think Pengy's not been feeling like a welcome guest of late. Trust me; ttry being a raven for ten years and eventually people will start complaining about the smell of old bird around the place. You are ahead of me, Moxie....I gave up on "art" years ago. These days I'd be deliriously happy just to achieve "craft" once in a while. (Actually, I think removing the capital letters from what you do makes it a little easier to see it with a clear eye. I want out of what I do everything that an "artist" wants, but since I'm not trying to live up to that title I can let go of ego and concentrate on actual accomplishment.) I still say the basic problem is that Sturgeon's Law holds, and Poser is the word-processor of 3d; like the former allows more hack writers to fill up the slush piles and jam the transoms with unsolicited manuscript, the latter has created a situation where people cry that they aren't allowed to submit more than one image a day to online galleries. Has nothing to do with potential quality; just something that goes hand-in-hand with that wonderful democratization that the new technologies have also brought. Anyone can make art now, and that is a wonderful thing. Programs like Bryce and Poser brought a great many people that never thought they could paint or draw to being able to actually realize some of what they imagined. And some of these self-doubting users have turned out to be very, very good. And that's a wonderful thing. I miss, myself, the days when listening to music meant you and your friends gathered around the piano in the parlor. So much, these days, it seems we are drawing lines and saying "SHE is an artist, but YOU are just a normal person and aren't allowed to take part." But let's not let this open-ness and this wonderful willingness on the part of many to play blind us to a very basic idea; that if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing well. Or maybe at the heart of things there is a conflict here between Artiste and Craftsman. That nothing raises the hackles on the latter more than people who refuse to learn technique; and that the former is only interested in the "love me for my inner beauty" game played by every amateur poet out there. (I try to take a neutral view of this conflict, but it is hard as my blood is pure Morlock -- craftsman to the core, with an instinctive racial dislike of the Aht and Beauty crowd.) So is there no middle ground? Is it not possible for some of the posters to this thread to step back and say "Okay, I'm doing this for myself, it's only important that I do ART and whatever I want is all that is important.....but it wouldn't kill me to learn a little about Color Theory, and maybe even try my hand at making a mesh once. Who knows; I might like it!"