What if:
After ten years of drawing, four years of publishing, and five years of doing stuff on the Web, I am starting to form a vision of what might be.
So far I think we have created lots of successful bits and pieces.
- I enjoy having a forum to share my thoughts and drawings in a polished way on my site.
- Our Yahoo! group has almost 2,000 members now, with about a half-dozen new ones joining each day.
- Karen's weekly challenges have given structure and encouragement to many people, providing a common experience and a way to track one's progress.
- Flickr has given us a place to share scans of our drawings.
- MySpace is sort of interesting but so vast and hard to wade through that I am not quite sure what to make of it.
- YouTube and MySpace have allowed me to start to share little film experiments.
- Libsyn and iTunes also let me post videos and podcasts. I have just put one little toe into this vast ocean.
-Amazon, alibris and Abe.com gives us a way to buy books on drawing and creativity, many published in small quantities that would make them impossible to find at a small local store or library.
Despite all these fragments, I am not completely satisfied.
So much great content and no lbrarian:
Our community has generated so much fantastic and invaluable content: reviews of products, tips on technique, psychological coubnselling, not to mention thousands of wonderful pieces of art.
I'm not in love with reading my daily email summaries of posts to EDM Yahoo! and then having to go to my browser and look on various web sites for individually posted drawings done by each poster. We generate and share a lot of WORDS when what we are most interested in is IMAGES. But there's no organized centralized way to actually share those images yet.
I don't like the fact that so many interesting opinions and stories disappear into the undifferentiated archives of our 20,000 postings.
I wish I could see how different people have used a particular medium and then ask them about it. I'd love to see who has most successfully painted a dachshund or drawn at the zoo, and pick their brains.
It would also be nice to have a Wikipedia sort of thing that allowed people to review and edit reviews of books, art supplies, movies, courses, tecahers, etc.
My own content is becoming a thicket. While I had my site radically redesigned last year, I still don't feel like the past content (thousands of pages by now) is as available and retrievable as it could be (I get emails every day from people who are asking me questions I've answered at length before; I wish they didn't have such trouble figuring out where the answer can be found).
So many great people and so far apart:
I love when we get to have some sort of physical form of community: the sketchcrawls have been great and I wish they could run as smoothly here in New York as they seem to do in Southern California. I also love getting mail from people during our little contests. I wish everyone could share in the loveliness of that. It would be terrific if we could make our get-to-gethers a global phenomenon and a regular one at that. I don't appear to be great at coordinating it.
Similarly, it would be great to eventually have some sort of planned get together in a nice locale, say rent a retreat and fly or drive in and spend a weekend together, drawing, talking, being.
Welcome, whoever you are:
While quite a lot of new members introduce themselves, they quickly tend to get blended into the party and it's often hard to recall who they were exactly and what their unique perspective was. I wish we could have a way to create profiles of people, where they're from, what the do, how they came to drawing, what they'd like to learn, etc. I'd also like to help folks who are brand-new to drawing and have the community help them into the saddle in some systematic but customizable way.
Commerce and art can be friends.
I think it would be nice to have a way to own a piece of art that I like. Drawings, paintings, textiles, what have you. It would be great to be able to approach an artist in some sort of streamlined and legitimate way and acquire their work.
The same would be true with authors, musicians, and manufacturers. We are a smallish but still potentially influential group. I know many publishers would love to have us consider and support a book on journaling or drawing or creativity. Perhaps we could get discounts on bulk purchases on books, pens, etc.
My fantasy online community would have a big chat area (both posted and live, IM type chat). Posts could be categorized so they would fall into useful folders that could be retrieved easily even of years have passed. Posts could easily include images (like flickr) and yet would be easily accessed by people with different sorts of internet connections. They could also be recordings, like phone messages, or recordings of roundtable conversations on important topics which one could listen to even one had missed the original session.
Members would have their own blogs pages where they could post their work and comment on it and it could be cross-referenced with tags like a flickr picture so one could look up each EDM challenges or first watercolors or self portraits etc.
There would be a central directory of members and a way to find out who lived nearby and away to set up get-togethers (like MeetUp).
There would be a library which would include reviews of books, lessons and demos created by members and guests (audio, video, written, or illustrated). These could be annotated and commented on by anyone who chose to throw in questions or additions.
Publishers and manufacturers would hold events in the library for all members and sell and give away new books and products. Conference and class organizers would come to us, present their programs,and set up shop. They would not hector or spam us but would have areas where they could provide testimonials and work from past students. When a conference or event happens, groups members who participated would report to everyone else on their experience. We could also provide direction to the organizers on what classes we'd like to have in the future.
There would be a gallery-store that featured the work of anyone who wanted to show and share. We could also have a CaféPress sort of thing where one could buy t-shirts or products featuring the designs of other members.
There would be some sort of mechanism that sent out tips, suggestions, assignments, to anyone who signed up so they could get prompts to continue to develop their creativity,
We'd have an expert section where people who teach or publish could discuss the questions the rest of us have.
I see this community incorporating or subsuming the sort of content one sees in The Artist magazine or Watercolor Magic or on the HG channel or in events like Artella, etc. People would emerge form the community and help to organize, teach, encourage etc, and then in turn be educated and encouraged by someone else.
Maybe this place already exists. Or maybe there's an existing place where we could set up shop and incorporate the best of Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, dannygregory.com, blogger,etc. Or maybe we need a rich sponsor or a grant (Bill? Warren? Wanna learn to draw?) or a really dumb venture capitalist. Or maybe we're fine the way we are and I should go back to drawing Joe rolling in the grass.
What do you think? What, if anything should we do better?
A record of my exploration into all aspects of drawing, illustrated journaling, creativity, and the inspiring aspects of art. By the author of "Everyday Matters," "The Creative License", and "An Illustrated Life" and other books.
Comments
Great idea. You know what they say -- if it can be conceived it can be done. There must be lots of our artists who are also tech wizards. Just need to connect the dots. Keep thinking and writing. Someone or Someones? will rise to the occasion.
Posted by: Marilyn Gallas | July 11, 2006 08:53 PM
More long-haired dachsunds. In all different media.
The other? Let me think on it a bit.
Posted by: Dusty | July 11, 2006 10:26 PM
I think you've really hit on something here, Danny. I 'd love to see it done. It seems like existing sites are either based around photographers or professional illustrators, rather than on the growing legion of people who do "everyday" drawing. I'd like to volunteer myself for working on this, if anyone else wants to team up and consider the beast.
Posted by: Jason Das | July 12, 2006 01:39 AM
I think the wiki would be a fabulous idea. Much of what people contribute online has lasting value of different degrees. Wikis are optimal for this kind of content that remains accessible as long as necessary and can be revised when necessary.
Posted by: Miguel | July 12, 2006 03:18 AM
First. LOVE your watercolors of the dogs.
Of course, I don't have THE answer, but I can suggest (and help with) a conference. Like in Asilomar
http://www.visitasilomar.com/default.aspx It's on the Calif. coast, hosts things like this all the time. WE, your Danny Gregory community, could spend a long weekend or week there, with you. You'd give a keynote address. Some workshops. Invite Dan Price and Tom Kane (and Kate and Keri) to speak or lead workshops. We go on giant sketchcrawls. The last day we'd have a giant show & tell.It could be an annual event... Like I said. I'll help.
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July 12, 2006 09:19 AM
Danny, I can't help with computer things, teaching ect I've only started my drawing journey about a year or so ago. It seems sometimes that all this has really gotten out of hand. I agree with that everything is not as personal as it was many moons ago. All I would like is everyday does matter drawing and people trying to help one another that have diffrent drawing painting experinces. And places where you could seepeoples work to help you learn when youre being self taught and to chat and be together. I really do beleive that this has been what you wantwd all along since you started all this and then we found you. I know I dont have much to offer other then I'm behind you .
Thanks for the time.
Linda Pa
Posted by: Linda | July 12, 2006 05:33 PM
A conference - great idea! Get Roz to come! I'd be happy to help with the details, living right outside the city. Maybe a weekend event? Workshops, sketchcrawls, demos, slides...
Posted by: Loretta | July 12, 2006 07:28 PM
At Karen's suggestion I spent some time at wetcanvas.com. I think everyone should check it out. It has a lot of resources, a lot of people (85,000!), and is clearly valuable. I can understand why some of us like it and yet also come here. EDM seems more like a village next to the sprawling metropolis of Wetcanvas. I guess it's like Greenwich Village where I live, one of the few parts of New York not built on the grid system. It's easy to get lost but it has loads of organic charm. My time at wetcanvas was a bit of a shock and made me continue to think. I don't think we want EDM to be something as huge and dense and stratified as that; and somehow all of the neat drawers and compartments, which make it easy to find and access stuff, also diminish the personality a bit. So one option could be just to uproot ourselves and move into an apartment building over at wet canvas. But I think EDM is unusual in that we aren't just interested in drawing but in exploring, in experiencing the world through drawing, in sharing our foibles with each other. When I saw that there are classes with written tests and things, I shuddered. Shades of the very things that drove me away from drawing thirty-something years ago.
A person named Brianna Privett contacted me today after reading my post; she and her partner run a host called utopia.net and they are interested in building a community of artists. They seem quite tech savvy but we'll see what else they have to say, I guess the question would be: would they want to charge us to host our community or could we be some sort of beta model community. And if they did want to charge us, is it worth it and how would we pay for it? Check out her blog ((http://brianna.org) and see how seamlessly it is integrated with flickr. Cool.
Caroline Hounsell recommended douglas@fractured.net who builds and runs forums. Their members pay a nominal fee to belong. I have also written to the guys who invented and run pbwiki.com. I signed up for a site there a while ago but don't know what it really is. It could perhaps be used as a separate site to house our library. I dunno.
Should we set up some sort of steering committee? I was thinking that we have: - some people with tech experience (Jeff Lang seems to have some thoughts) - some people who are good at organizing - some people with ideas about a big get together (Jane LaFazio and Brenda Dammann have already put in recommendations) - some people who might have ideas about fund raising if necessary. - some people who might have connections with publishers and other sources of products and stuff - lots of people who are creative.
Whaddayathink?
Your pal, Danny
Posted by: danny | July 12, 2006 08:00 PM
I love the idea of a retreat. I have often imagined a workshop with multiple teachers where everyone could spend a day with each teacher (including the teachers!) and also have events for the whole group. A more casual retreat without formal teaching would be great too though.
Your online community idea sounds like heaven! Maybe instead of replacing all of the disparate resources we have now with an uber-site there would be an independent framework that would link it all together somehow: a community-community. I'm a software person - going to give that some thought. Some of the forum/bulletin board software provides parts of what you envision (better searching, home pages, logins) but their interfaces are so clunky. Strong communities do develop though.
Posted by: Martha | July 12, 2006 08:20 PM
If you'd like, I can create a wiki just for the purpose you'd described, as well as an online portal with chat and such. I owe so much of my current happiness to you inspiring words and books, and would love to help others learn about something so simple as illustrating a journal.
Posted by: Kira | July 13, 2006 10:46 AM
You should check out the forums over at VeganFreak.com. It is actual bulletin board software that allows members to have profiles, post in topics and threads instead of the reading every email style yahoo has, include pictures, and has live chat running all the time that you can join in on if you are a member.
Their forums won a webby.
It is a highly active community, focusing on a completely different topic but maybe you could look into adding that to the back end of your website instead of having your group go through yahoo. I used to run an art quilting website and we had a forum installed - the company who owns the software installs it for you and it wasn't hard to manage at all. A small learning curve but after that it was cake.
Posted by: jessiegirl | July 13, 2006 06:08 PM
Steering committee it is! Sign me up for 'Events: West Coast Division'
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July 13, 2006 07:34 PM
I like the wikipedia idea as well. the group format has become unwieldy. An actual living site where the content constantly changes from direct group input would be a great way to manage our collective knowledge.
Posted by: Ken McCarthy | July 13, 2006 08:24 PM
Well, you can have one page where it is a visual map with all of those suggestions on the map, drawn as a community area. Then people could click on the different subjects in that area and go directly to that part. The chat area could be a picture of a cafe. The posting area could be a post office bulding, the email something else, like a mailbag. Then the people community could be a bus station.As for Wikopedia, it could be a library. Everything could be in chronilogical order, and accessible that way. Your Everday blog could be in another part of the community, as well as other people's blogs and works of art. Kind of a cop-off of the Warner brothers page, Disney page, Aol's community. I dont know. Just a thought.
Posted by: lainey | July 18, 2006 09:43 AM
Have you checked out deviantart.com? They have member pages similar to what you are describing.. forums, live chat etc etc. They also have there own print service. Maybe something like that??
Posted by: Dan | July 25, 2006 07:33 AM
You might try www.illustrationfriday.com as well. It is a very interesting art community created by Penelope D. in which a word is posted every Friday for people to illustrate in some way and then they share the result. It is very interesting to see all of the resulting solutions.
Posted by: Andrea Osiek | July 28, 2006 05:29 PM
There is a new web community called VOX (www.vox.com) that lets people with common interests blog, connect, share and post images and media. I have some invitations, I would be happy to send you one so you can check it out.
Posted by: Darren | August 2, 2006 05:09 PM