I think ugly is a strong word, Its neutral, maybe a little boring, but only really the forum part i think, but then again its the forum, what people write should be whats interesting :D, the rest have pictures, the gallery and marketplace is full of them. The prime forum is still there and you can still filter Poser items objects in the marketplace, none of that have been changed. Not saying that it couldn't be better, but the new design doesn't seem to have made any changes to these things. Its take a few more clicks to get to the forums that are not listed as a sub category, which I think is fine, as long as these are not the "main" ones. But for this to be of any use those shown in the list have to be the main forums, otherwise this functionality is just clutter.

Also before Renderosity started to change the site there were a lot of commercials everywhere, which added a lot of color, but members complained about those as well so they got removed as far as I know, which I personally think is good as a forum shouldn't be filled with stuff like that. Its fine on the front page, gallery etc.

So im not really sure what you would like to see in regards to the website being more appealing to the artistic people, do you just mean the grey and black theme that you don't like or do you have examples of forums/marketplaces that are much better at this? Daz3d is the most obvious site to compare to, but I don't really see them doing a better job at this. They just went with a white background :D

Maybe its because I don't really understand what you mean with "no draw for artistic people"? Do you have any examples of marketplaces/forums that does this well? I would like to see them, just so I know what you mean or what you are aiming for.