Art Contest Start!

Alright, so we didn't get many suggestions like I had hoped, but maybe that will just get better over time as we get this thing rolling. I wanted to throw up a poll, but to be honest I would like to avoid a theme that involves drawing the peoples and beasties of The Garden specifically. I probably should have mentioned that before, but I didn't really think about it at the time. If peoples are left out of drawings then feelings might be hurt and that's no fun for anyone. So, I'm going to just go with "The Garden as we see it" since that doesn't necessarily mean anyone has to be drawn.

Any software can be used to make your work of art (it can even be drawn with pencil on a piece of notebook paper and scanned if that's your preferred medium), but it has to be 100% your own work. This means no photos, no stolen pictures or drawings from the internet or elsewhere, no clipart, and ultimately nothing that you haven't made with your own two hands (or one hand if you're not ambidextrous).

You have until the 28th of August (roughly 2 weeks) to submit a link of your work of art in a comment below this post. It can be linked from photobucket, deviantart, or whatever works for you. Please make sure that your name is written legibly somewhere on the work of art so that we know it's yours. Everyone is encouraged to participate even if they don't think they can draw. This is purely for fun, so there's no pressure on you to create an incredibly wonderful masterpiece that leaves us all breathless.

After everyone has submitted their art (and hopefully Lancer and I figure out how to display them all on the blog in a reasonable way), we will put a poll on the blog and everyone will vote for their favorite piece (please try to avoid voting for your own work). Then I'll try to figure out what exactly I'm going to give the winner as a prize and we'll start with a new theme on the 1st of September. Have fun!

Art Contest Theme

Alright peoples and beasties of The Garden, I want to get an art contest up and running for all of you regulars. I've been wanting to start one for a while now, but I've kept putting it off.

First we need to come up with a theme for this month's contest. It should be relatively specific since it's difficult to choose one drawing over another if the topic is too broad. If everything works out well then I hope to have one every month from now on, so think up some good ideas and post one of them (saving some for the coming months). Once we have a nice number of suggestions then we'll throw some of them up in a poll and have all of you vote on which ones you like the best. Then I'll make a new blog post announcing the theme and explaining some minor rules for the art contest. We'll hopefully have a winner by the end of the month.

Also, if any of you have prize suggestions to offer the winner (other than a firm pat on the back and congratulations) then please let me know. It needs to be something that can be sent electronically as I don't know how comfortable people would be giving me their address, and preferably cheap or free (I'm poor). My own suggestion was going to be a picture that I draw showing how awesome the winner is...but being that this is an art contest and the winner can probably draw better than me, I'm not sure it's really much of a prize.

Garden Blog is UP!

Yup. The Garden Blog is up... which you probably already figured out since you came here. Not much more to say really... umm... more to come?