It's all very well people criticising Poser users - but what makes an artist? I can't draw for toffee, can't paint, and the only artistic skill I have is calligraphy (and that's now not as good as it was because of arthritic fingers).

Is art just the ability to wield a paintbrush or chisel? What about the imagination that turns a plain canvas into a field of glowing flowers or whatever?

I admire greatly the people (like Vallejo in fantasy art, for example), who produce great images with their own native talent and ability - but I also admire many here who use computers and digital applications to produce their fantasy images or paintings (don't forget Painter). And what about the people who create the "dolls" we use in Poser, using 3d software? They have great imagination, patience and the skills to create their 3d models.

The computer enables me to turn my ideas into images; are these images "art", and am I an "artist"? The purists would say no to both questions and some art groups will not exhibit "digital paintings". What I do is take the "dolls" and other objects that other people have created (and which I cannot create for myself) and use them in images which I create. Whether or not they would count the final result I produce as worthy of praise as artistic I would suggest to the purists and others that without the imagination that dreams up a picture in the first place no image worthy to be called art would ever reach canvas or paper.

Where my "art" differs from that of those who mock Poser is in the fact that I depend on many many other people for the products I use in my images; on those who created the computer, the internet, the hard discs, printers, scanners, on those who wrote the applications such as Poser and Photoshop, on those here who create the objects, the props, "dolls", clothes, and - well, on people without whom none of my images could exist outside my head.

I don't say I create "art"; but judging by the kind comments my creations attract there are people here who find my offerings artistic.

And the purists should also consider the fact that many people, who are neither art critics nor artists in their sense of the word, do not think much of some of the "artistic" offerings to be found in our great national galleries. I don't think I need enumerate some of the sillier of those offerings.

If you can do it all by hand, without anything more than a pot or two of paint, a canvas and a set of brushes, good for you; but if you can't, then why should you be sneered at for using whatever tools are at hand that you can use?