OK, first off, I waited till there were 89 messages before I even got involved in this thread. My first reaction when I saw it was the knowledge that this same subject is being covered in 1-3 other threads which are running right now. The threads probably have a different subject name, but the essence is all the same. Why do we have so many nudes? What is art? Etc etc. When I started out I did many nudes because I either had no clothes to put on my women, or I didn't know how to keep their clothes on them. I took many large pose libraries and set out to render all the poses. Some poses went just fine, while other poses caused the women to burst out of their clothing no matter what I did. So what the heck? I can't keep them in their clothes, and I like nudes anyway. So I do another nude. Gosh, look at the hits a nude gets vs a tasteful render with the characters dressed. I've seen maybe 200 more hits for my nudes than some other images. Hey so sometimes even I look at the numbers. There has been much talk about the "sameness" of the gallery. You hear comments like "Gee, not another naked vicky in the temple picture." At least some of us happen to go through waves or trends. Go to the Marketplace. Do many people buy the same props, scenes, characters, outfits, textures? If you have the same ingredients, your art tends to look the same as someone else's. Who knows if the temple will be popular next month. Maybe they'll be in a local tavern, hotel, motel?! I used to get excited about spending some time in the Gallery. I'd be sure to leave compliments to all the artists, especially newbies. Now I can barely stand to go there. I've sunken pretty much into a creative rut myself. I wasn't doing much of interest till I set about illustrating my own poems. Believe me, I'm not being critical here. Just how many variations of themes, or new ideas can we come up with? I seem to remember a song or poem that goes something like this: Every song that can be written has been sung. Every story that can be told has been written. *** I'm sure I totally fractured that "saying," wherever it came from. Hopefully you get the idea. So we do our best with what we have, and at least try to put some of ourselves into our art. Ron