Yes, it’s true…I’m one of the few, the proud…the cry babies.

So listen to me now, hear me later and think about it sometime…

Artists, CAN be a bit oversensitive at times (at least the type that grew up like me…without any formal training and starting with crayola and working up to the big gurl/boy stuff like oils and acrylics, clay etc. and later trying to work their way through a computer version of their own style and attempting to make what feels so unnatural with a mouse look as if they actually had their hand in the dang thing).

I grew up using art as my emotional outlet because I didn’t really have any other outlet that served me as well (okay, poetry and singing were good too). Perhaps it’s true that wincustomize is more strictly a skin site rather than an artistry type of site but I’d sorely miss the wallpapers that are here and let’s put this in perspective for a wee moment shall we? Wallpaper can set the mood for your whole desktop environment so to discount it as mere “fluff” that should *only* compliment the skins which define your OS elements seems rather dissident and ignorant in my opinion. I love to see a sunset on my desktop…I love to see the night stars and a city at night…I even love (gawd forbid) dolphins and beaches and palm trees…oh my

Food for question…

Is “skinning” even an art? And if we stripped *every* artist and skinner here of every filter or program known to mankind and made them do it without anything at all but a pixel by pixel…would this site even exist? And if we judge everyone by the program they use…(i.e. Bryce, Photoshop etc.) then…is our digital art just a fanciful example of one’s skill at that program? Does being a *digital* artist as a whole make that art feel as if it’s without soul and without feeling? Without the fingerprint that gives an artist his/her style? I think that a program or filter does NOT make the artist…but rather enhances his/her abilities… I liken it to…traditional artists from days of yore who considered using prefab colors in paint a *no-no* and felt that creating one’s own colors from a pot of the basic 3 (i.e. yellow, red, blue) were the only true way of creating art. They also seriously frowned upon black and white as actual paint colors because those are considered *shades* and one should be disciplined enough not to need those as long as one is careful…

Almost every windowblinds skin “screams” KPT 5 shapeshifter…and I love that proggy too…but does that mean…you are cheating? I hope not! I think the beautiful stuff that people do with that is reason enough to use it!

Did I just go off on a tangent?

Sorry, just ingore this post and move on to important matters! )