Fangzzz

Bugoy1, sorry if I came across too negative. I have to be very grateful for your sharing of the tab of profiles to prevent leaving the page without a warning. I can see this will be very creative ownership sparing. thank you.

What I really appreciate about this site are:
-Perfect relaxing alternative to traditional games - at the end you have something, rather than just never ending leveling up and battling other people.
-Allows self discovery. Seeing other art evokes emotion and deep memories. It is a poke to a recorded daydreaming.
-Sense of humor. Each picture is like a micro story. For me, over time they develop. Some pieces that initially I haven't liked, I get an ah-ha moment with feeling I've stepped into the others brain - the joke on me that I initially didn't get it.
-Simple is good done well and creative. I've see so many example of different takes of creativity on simple elements - a round circle gives bears, bicycles, bus wheels, beaks, shading and so many why didn't I think of that.
-Just when you think there is no more, you sit down to eat dinner and your meal is transformed to art! Then I can't wait to rush back and try again.
-Shows me my weakness in drawing. Shading I understood, but contrasting color shades I did not. I thought I understood vanishing point, but I struggle with it. That reflections are like vanishing points - size and hue changes. Daily there are subtle details I pick up.
-Allows you to get use to "being on stage". Even the best here, galleries have some misses. Like performance art is also allows you to evaluate. "If I would have used a tad brighter color, or a little less busy people would have liked it more."
-That art does have a part in my life. In the time since starting here, I visited two museums. I did pick up a sketch pad. I'm less passive, more proactive.

My nature is raw. I'm a bulldozer that pushes for progress. I speak my truth. My screen name is not accidental. Yet, I appreciate your exchange. I can see the part I will grow to like very much is community.

Baldur

Does anyone else miss matthew? He would be right in the thick of this.
Thank you Fangzzz, this is why Channel Baldur is here.
Well that and about a thousand other reasons.
To the best of my knowledge bugoy1 was the first among us to bring students into the fold.There were obviously mixed results.

Since this thread is now and always has been narcissistic, I will insert something about me.
'All Baldur, All the Time'
Baldur does not view himself as an artist. Nothing I do here comes easily or looks as my intitial mental image prophecized.
Despite these strings of conversations I find it hard to picture everyone here together as a community. It is more an exhibition of hermits.
Imagine us each in our separate caves, chipping away at our work.
When you determine something is at a point that you will do no more you carry it outside and display it in the canyon. You go back to your work and other hermits happen by, scrawling remarks on the wall.
You never meet them. Sometimes the comments are supportive, othertimes rude, occasionally undecipherable.

There are insightful people you hope to meet some day, knowing it may never happen.
Rude or seemingly rude people glide by invisibly leaving bits of hate.
Will you ever meet them? maybe they were misjudged.

OK, back to my cave.


btw...great photos mdawrcn, thank you.

bugoy1

Fangzzz, that is a great list! You named some that I didn't even think about. I agree with them too.

When I found ThinkDraw I was so excited. I was consumed with the idea. Everything I saw I tried to imagine in beads, candy or another palette. I naturally wanted to share my enthusiasm with friends and family. They frankly didn't care. My wife and kids just look at the images I've made and say, "meh". All I can think is, "I spent two hours for 'meh'"? So when I found students who like to draw, I thought I would share this with them. Kids and computers go together - right? But as Baldur said, the results were mixed. Still, I wish there were more participants here.

Baldur brings up a good analogy. Hermits posting drawings on the community wall seems pretty close. Though I am fairly introverted, I feel like an extrovert here. Perhaps I am expecting others to share more than they feel comfortable. I like to learn about the rest of the community though. You are all my friends who live in the computer I think it would be fun to meet members in person. I have images and impressions of what I think each of you are like, but I'm curious to know how far off my ideas are.

Fangzzz

Art is my great adventure bugoy1, getting to know me here is getting to know my art. I've surprised myself that sometimes my themes are more "girly" than I am in real life. This is like Halloween. You get to dress up for a day and try on a new view of life. Play.

Hint to my artistic nature - I once sold to a large corporation a painting for $3,000 and then later bought it back. Never anything else. Here I can have it and share it. Found it interesting to read that there was one here that deleted many as I had considered monthly doing a major delete down to just my best five of the month. Editing is the white space of life. With time I hope my art can be writing. If I can draw it, I can write about it.

Here I can be an Afro American, a White homeless person, a WWII vet, a college student, an near death person with longing memories; I can vent rage and gain peace and I can be a child toying with my food. Which one of these am I? For the government census - no application, yet here I am all. One day I can be the quiet hermit just seeking to refine color use, the next day the person that redoes a piece just to see if the hit rate increases - completely begging narcasstic, I can just sit back and be a lurker in awe over others art guts being spilled before me and then even I don't know if tomorrow I will have 8 pictures in me or none.

Maybe this is the one place in the world between faked and repeated lol and lmao s that I can be most real to myself. Art therapy for the price of an hour.

Baldur are you a founding member, the founder? Lasting presence here.

Baldur

No, I had nothing to do with the developement of this site

Baldur

The oldest image in Baldur's Gallery dates to 8 November, 2008. I believe the site to be about a year older, though the exact start dates eludes me.

My earliest works here have long since been erased.
This thread, officially 'Channel Baldur' but referred to as 'Radio Baldur' was something I devised at a rime when ThinkDraw was suffering from technical difficulties.
For a brief period some sort of computer bug struck and none of us were able to fabricate art here. I jumped in and started a bizarre twist on a radio talk show. Thousands of posts later this thread still lives.

Oddly the forum was an outgrowth of a group of us using the 'comments' function to carry on conversations. We have been somewhat coddled by the site owners.
They generously gave us the forum, our personal updates, ever increasing themes to use and many bits of fine tuning.
They listened patiently to our whining about voting inequities, ranking problems and gallery layout and then did their utmost to fix the sources of discontent.
We are all in all a bit spoiled.

Baldur

rime - r +t = time
(I use this method to explain corrections in my spelling as Baldur can be a bit obsessive of such things)

Lolla

"When I found Think Draw I was so excited" - Bugoy1. I think we all felt that way the first time we put these "BITS" together. I did!!! I have this dyslexia of not remember faces or images. Looking at a Rooster, look away and NO Rooster - image gone!! Can't even recall my kids faces. TD helped me to put pieces together till an image occur, looking like something. I can't even draw from a picture. Here I gather enough confidence to be on six sites, Painting, Drawing and Designing. Will for ever be THANKFUL to all my FRIENDS (members) who still help me to get a Top5. God Bless and tons of Love - Marie (Lolla)

Normal

Just catching up on "all Baldur" inter alia. I think you're right about the hermit thing - the reason my ID pic is the Tarot hermit. (In fact, I store my collection of decks so the Hermit is always the top card in each.) However, I also have a streak of what my brother would call "Hammus Alabamus," a reference from the old Pogo comic strip. Astrologists would say "Moon in Leo." This too seems to match many of our participants. Bless 'em all!

Baldur

Does anyone remember this song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeqOLxRDsV8
It is Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5
Baldur just found this parody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjERnmcjbAE
It's by Bob the Builder no less.
Enjoy

Baldur

...and speak of the ..um... matthew; it's his birthday.
Happy Birthday old buddy, wherever thou art.

marg

thanks, Baldur.. just left a quick 'happy birthday' on one of matthew's pics

.. which led me to go back to the good old / bad old days and have a look at my old 'forum' pic (apres yours) and also to rediscover the first picture I ever dedicated to you :
http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=12303

LOL, buddy, I think this site has moved on enormously since then and the quality of the drawings has improved exponentially - but there's still the same love of playing !

Did me good to see old names like Tim, Likeme, Palmas, HD & Rassle, though, when looking through the old stuff !

Baldur

thank You marg
It is fun to pore through the older stuff.

So who currently is the still active player with the most seniority here? Is it you?
I am of course discounting Rachel who is still here, but if she produces anything in our gallery it must be under an alias.

Baldur

By the way, Baldur can only scroll back to page 560 in the Gallery. There seems to be an invisible wall there.
That brings me only to Spring 2013.

My personal picture Gallery works as far back as 2008

marg

Yeah.. you can't go back directly any more - must ask Rachel about that..

I managed to go back to June 2008 by playing with the picture IDs - so check out the first available one by Rachel (82), gideon (101) chuckles (127)

Mike (likemee) started 20-Jun-08.. damn.. didn't write the number down.. will publish a list of URLs next week, when I have some time..

- however, check out the Top 5 for July 2008
[http://www.thinkdraw.com/top5july08.php], which I think was the first Top 5 and featured Mike and Lizmeister

Lynspotter and nancylee started on 5-Oct-08, Login (25-Oct-08), puzzler (27-Oct-08), me (3-Nov-08), you (5-Nov-08), matthew (13-Nov-08), kmkagle (27-Nov-08), but in terms of seniority, we all have to bow to Qsilv (7-Jul-08) [ http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=445]

Erh, humm.. so yes, Baldur, I have seniority .. but I shall apply it softly [however, beware puzzler and other more senior TDers, who may want to pull rank for the fun of it]

puzzler

This hermit hereby pulls rank!!!

puzzler

Ah... the nostalgia of the good old days, when each cave-dweller knew their place and were content with their primitive drawings. Communications were basic, until a common language began to develop in the land of Baldur. Cave-dwellers began to bond and tribal rivalries sometimes raged. New members aspired to be accepted into the clans and an online civilisation was born.

Baldur

Well it is most interesting that so many of us found this site within a very short time of each other (and are still here).
Baldur's cave is quite pleasant.

Baldur

Gardening continues apace here at Boughbreak.
The 18 tomato plants that were purchased at various nurseries have all been planted.
Rasslebear mailed Creole Tomater seeds to me last Summer. He insists 'tomater' is the correct spelling.
They apparently can only be purchased at a farmstand or off the back of a truck in Louisiana.
I started 12 of the seeds in small peat pots and every last one sprouted.
They are yet too small to set out into the garden.
It should be quite traumatic for them to learn they are destined to be planted in Yankee soil.

Baldur

The other varieties planted here include:
Big Beef
Yellow
Sweet 100
Cherokee Purple
Mortgage Lifter
German Johnson
Yellow Pear