This website has become, over the years, an overwhelming playground for tedious amateur art. While there are some rare and wonderful exceptions, most of the art pieces I see on here are honestly medoicre at best. An opinion, I know, but right now it's how I feel. I suppose that given the nature of this site, it's sort of expected, but lately it feels as if it's getting out of hand. There just isn't much originality here anymore. It's a delight when I do see it, but it's just so terribly infrequent. It frustates me. With nearly every piece that I see, including the popular ones and the daily deviations, I look at it and almost instantly think, "This looks like a DeviantArt piece." Has it gotten so bad that art that is featured on this website has its own feel anymore, something that can be attributed to the site itself? Maybe it has. I admit that I am just as guilty as the other artists with my own contributions. Not much originality goin' on with me either. I only have one piece that I feel even hints at true originality, to be honestly self-critical. But... I hope to change that. Ideally, I hope to inspire my fellow artists to break through the oversaturaturation of typicality here and create something truly original, as well as acheive this myself.

Create something that's too big and important and spectacular for DeviantArt. To any fellow artist who is reading this, that's your homework assignment. Don't disappoint me.

On that note, I have an art project I'm working on. A couple, actually. I hope to finish them and publish them to DeviantArt so they'll be copyrighted (more for copyright purposes than for display or recognition). It's an original set of ideas, and I admit I'm a bit protective of them. The first is an image that's bright and hopeful, but also morbid and bleak. One aspect does not contradict the other, but rather they compliment each other in a very real way. I like how it works like that. Been stuck in my head for several months now. Time for me to make a manifestation of it. Been gathering reference images so I can hopefully make it appear gritty and realistic. It needs to appear that way in order to achieve the effect I'm going for. Also done a rough concept sketch. I want to do some photography of my own to layer into it as well. The second project will involve just photography and Photoshop. This one's a bit more on the minimalistic side. It also carries the theme of two opposing aspects coexisting in the same image, but this one's much more contradictory. I want it to give that sensation of unnatural contradiction, but in a very surreal way. I expect the finished product to be in moderately high contrast black and white, but significantly more white than black. It'll be pretty bright. The photography will involve some difficult angles and also the use of water. I'll be the model for it, so I might have to enlist some help. Maybe. I'll try it on my own first.

I may update my progress, I may not. No promises. Know that I won't submit anything until I'm purely satisfied with it. Not even scraps. Just final products. I won't settle for anything less.