The fediverse has a huge community of blind and partially sighted users who rely on screenreaders to interact with posts with media. Alt text exists for this reason; without it, a screenreader will just say 'image' - but you, dear artist, can provide a more appropriate description of the image or photograph you're sharing.
@Curator And a request. I post a lot of images (photos and memes) and type alt-text on each one - I’m happy to do this and find no hardship or inconvenience whatever.
However…
In viewing posts with alt-text attached, very often the quantity typed obscures the image and I don’t see a way around this (iOS, phone & iPad, using Toot! app).
It would be lovely if we had an option to suppress alt-text so sighted viewers can enjoy the original image.
Thanks! Cynthia
@Curator And a request. I post a lot of images (photos and memes) and type alt-text on each one - I’m happy to do this and find no hardship or inconvenience whatever.
However…
In viewing posts with alt-text attached, very often the quantity typed obscures the image and I don’t see a way around this (iOS, phone & iPad, using Toot! app).
Seen some arty folk worrying about income now that they've lost audiences from other sites.
The fediverse has always been great at supporting indie artists, and there's the #CommissionsOpen tag that anyone posting about their comms should use - but someone suggested a commission day, so how about once a month (I may need some poking to remember!) I put out a call for people to reply with their commissions info in a thread, and you can also tag #CommissionsDay ?
@Curator#commissionsday Hey, I'm Elliott, I have all my commission info on Ko-Fi, but basically, I can draw furries, anthros, and humanoids with a price range of £5 -£15. At the moment, I'm saving up for a binder and a textbook that I can't pirate so any commissions are welcome. My portfolio is also all on Ko-Fi :3
@Curator Ghost forms of animals are £20-£50, about $25-$60. These are intelligent spirits from my RuneQuest game. Rendered items for spot art, £20-£60, simple flat scenes, £20-£40.
The first £5 covers admin and non-art time, so bulk orders are a cheaper.
I also have a patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DianaProbst for original postcards sent straight to you, which are laughably cheap as they start at £15 with worldwide shipping.
So they have found a significant cavity in one of my back teeth that reaches the nerve. It needs to be treated as the nerve would be exposed after cleaning the cavity. They also need to put a crown on it.
I am currently unemployed and have no income. I can't afford the treatment, although it is not urgent either. Therefore, I have started offering very cheap commissions (between 5€ and 15€), as well as settled a goal.
So they have found a significant cavity in one of my back teeth that reaches the nerve. It needs to be treated as the nerve would be exposed after cleaning the cavity. They also need to put a crown on it.
I am currently unemployed and have no income. I can't afford the treatment, although it is not urgent either. Therefore, I have started offering very cheap commissions (between 5€ and 15€), as well as settled a goal.
More for CSP users, Pirpi has a lovely set of halftone brushes that are fun to play with. I think they are only downloadable through CSP's asset store though? Link: https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1802041
Mastodon.art is not just for traditional art! We're for all kinds of creativity :dabart:
We have potters, woodworkers, musicians, videographers, tattoo artists, fiber artists, print makers, book binders, actors - even clowns :clown: (<-- that's @RussSharek , say hi, Russ is lovely <3)
@Curator@RussSharek I'm a master hairdresser! I make art by sculpting with haircuts and painting with hair color. I also paint in my free time, mostly acrylics on canvas, and I'm working on writing my first novel. I find beauty in everyday life and resonate with others who do the same 🤗
I don't boost anything that doesn't have alt text (or a call for help with alt text), and neither do many others. If you want your work shared more, alt-text it. <3
@Curator I don’t mean to be rude or anything. But it really is frustrating here. Having to make a discussion with someone is so hard. It is so frustrating. It’s like no one wants to discuss current events, barely anyone dosen’t want to discuss music/Tv none of that crap. Is there a hashtag for that? Really demotivating
@Curator Also, I don't know if this is just a me thing, but I find it helpful to write my alt texts into a text file and then copy-paste them into the box. It means that I don't have to rewrite them if I repost art.
@Curator Just want to say thank you, Curator and Mod Team for keeping us up to date with these kinds of things. I have a feeling it's the way it should be, but isn't always happening.
It's 'paying up the server' time in a week! If you'd like to chip in, even if it's a buck (imagine if all of the active users on .art contributed $1!), you can do so here:
Any excess over our server cost gets paid to our moderators for their hard work in keeping .art a safe and cozy community.
This is my “Jayhawks on the Kaw” quilt, inspired by my alma mater’s avian mascot and it’s location near the Kansas River (affectionately called the Kaw). The flowy edge-to-edge quilting is meant to resemble slowly moving water thus these are technically #SoggyBirbs 😂
Appreciating visual art takes moments, and interacting with the visual art on fedi takes seconds to look at the images, like, and boost. It takes a lot more time and work to listen to a music track, watch a video, or read someone's writing, and creators of those longer-form works often struggle for listeners/viewers/readers. If you have some free time this week, seek out your fedi writers, musicians, videographers, etc. and give their work some love.
Are you a creator of such longer form work and want some eyes or ears on your stuff? Need readers for your last written piece, or have a track you've composed that hasn't had much love? Leave a link below in this thread ⬇️ .
People with spare time, check here for work that you can donate some time and attention to. :artotter:
In our peak during the last few weeks, we were at 13k active users. We've dropped off a thousand or so now, so I'm going to temporarily open sign ups until we've had a few hundred new accounts maybe, then close again :)
* People will engage more with your post if they have content warnings. They won't boost un-CWed stuff for risk of upsetting other people.
* If you constantly post stuff that heavily falls under 'should be content warned', people will just block you. Again, you'll *lose* engagement for not using them.
#Bookwyrm is a free and open source alternative to Goodreads that runs Activity Pub, meaning it's a part of the federated network of platforms like Mastodon, and you can cross-communicate between here and accounts on Bookwyrm ^.^
If you enjoy the #fantasy and #scifi genres and want to diversify your #reading list, I have a curated list of #books here by non-straight-white-cis-male authors ;)
“Portraites of the inditchenous beestes of New Olland, undated drawing by Edward Lear, though likely sometime during 1831 to 1837 when the artist spent many months at a time recording the contents of the thirteenth Earl of Derby’s famous menagerie at Knowsley, near Liverpool”
Look at that dog.
Look at it.
Edward Lear published a self-illustrated book of limericks, "The Book of Nonsense", and it is wonderful.
If this is your current drawing level, grats, you're an artist <3
Oh! I have a fun art exercise following on from the post above, something that will hopefully provide a bit of liberation from the constant feeling of inadequacy :D
Let's all badly draw animals!
Pick any animal at all, and draw it badly. Use a reference if you want, but don't put too much thought into it. The point is that it should look unrealistic and ridiculous and even barely recognisable.
General advice for people coming over from Twitter and Instagram regarding hashtags:
Hashtags are a useful and important tool here. Clicking on a hashtag will show you results from across different servers, so they're important for federating content and finding people.
There's no need to have loads of tags on your post like Insta to try to catch more engagement, but also you won't be punished for using tags like Twitter.
Using one general tag (like # MastoArt or Photography)and 1-2 topic-specific tags (like # blender3d or krita) on your posts is enough.
We specifically don't like you using tags that don't belong on your content in order to try to get more views; that's not how mastodon works. If people click a caturday tag, they want to see cats.
We also have more granular tags that serve specific functions, like the #CuratorPrompts tag is only for art directly related to those prompts.
Gregory's Server
@Curator
And a request.
I post a lot of images (photos and memes) and type alt-text on each one - I’m happy to do this and find no hardship or inconvenience whatever.
However…
In viewing posts with alt-text attached, very often the quantity typed obscures the image and I don’t see a way around this (iOS, phone & iPad, using Toot! app).
It would be lovely if we had an option to suppress alt-text so sighted viewers can enjoy the original image.
Thanks!
Cynthia
@Curator
And a request.
I post a lot of images (photos and memes) and type alt-text on each one - I’m happy to do this and find no hardship or inconvenience whatever.
However…
In viewing posts with alt-text attached, very often the quantity typed obscures the image and I don’t see a way around this (iOS, phone & iPad, using Toot! app).
@Curator Say if I share a link to an image instead of uploading one fresh is there a way to add descriptive text to that as well?
I asked after this yesserday:
https://retrochat.online/@happmacdonald/110765949891490941