~carminethewolf

I'm a lazy person by nature and I get out of bed every morning with a mixed feeling of resentment and loathing. To this end I've managed to live a fairly sedentary existance for most of my adult life, happy to do most things pleasurable in life either sitting on my arse of laid on my back.

But I'm also aware of the fact that I'm approaching 30 and though I eat a healthy diet, I should be thinking about upping my physical exercise from none to some before I really start to feel the lack of exertion in my lifestyle.

I've been on medication that's kept me away from alcohol for a good time now and without lifting a finger I've lost three inches off my waist and feel better for it, but the horrors of the gym still await me.

So the wife and I joined one, were shown around and told that if we wanted we could see a member of staff to work out a personal reigime. This sounded like a good idea, until they actually started getting their teetch into it.

The woman I was presented to came up with a plan that would improve my cardio and defenition and the told me I looked scared when the workout added up to 3 hours in the gym. She assured me that it wouldn't take to long after rubbishing my idea of doing maybe an hour twice a week.

Don't these people understand?

I want to get fit, not follow in the footsteps of Charles Atlas or represent my country in the 2012 Olympics!

My wife emerged from her interview with a plan that pretty much centred around lifting daffodils and meditating for 5 minutes every fortnight.

Maybe being unfit and lazy isn't such a bad thing overall.

It surely can't kill me as quickly as the gym workout from hell?

So I finally did it, I caved in and ordered a 40k boxed set, which duly arrived in record time on a Saturday morning.

Now I have another tactical squad, terminators, commander and for the first time a dreadnought to add to my army.

I justified the purchase on the grounds that the miniatures in the box were worth more than £100 to buy individually.

The only problem is that now I have to sit down and actually paint them all.

I like this community...no, I love this community. In it I have found a place where one can find almost anyhting that you can imagine and more, so many different forms of art from so many parts of the world that the community is one that captures the true spirit of the internet. There are so many talented people around here and there are even those who are happy just to follow the art of others and add their works to a favs gallery.

At first I was very anxious about posting anything around here and it took a great deal of courage for me to start doing so. Since then I have had little cause to regret the decision as the vast majority of the feedback and reaction to my work has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of my pictures have been added as favourites by meultiple users and viewed by many more.

But it seems as though not all deviants are as positive.

The other day I recieved a comment on one of the images in my Pink series, one that had managed to attarct a number of favourites, that was negative to say the least. It seems that this user had little constructive to say about the deviation save to ask whether the picutre was of me or my partner and why I had chosen to post it at all.

In response to the first point, the identity of any model that I choose to use in a shoot is none of his or anyone else's business. As regards the second, what a stupid question to ask, why do any of us post stuff around here? Because we create art and want to share it with people who might appreciate it as well.

I responded by insinuating that he should crawl back under the bridge he normally lives under, like a good little troll. And in response I recieved a rather strange message in which he seemed to think the title "troll" was related to some mysterious story and then accused me of "spamming" DeviantArt.

While the first part of the comment was bizarre, the second seems somewhat subjective of this user's own perception of what constitutes art and spam. There are many things posted on this site that I might find trite, derivative or without artistic merit. But I don't see it as my place to attack the devinats who post them and accuse them of "spamming" the site.

The truth is that one of the beauties of this site is that so long as the users keep within the rules of the site, they are free to post what they want. If you don't like it then there's no compulsion to view or comment on it and if you find it offensive or think it breeches the rules then you are free to report it to the moderators. Posting insulting and offensive messages on another deviant's work is therefore rather an act of beligerance and ego than an attempt to offer constructive criticism.

I won't name the deviant, as that would simply give unwarrented attention to the little troll, but suffice to say that I have banned them and will not stand for any more of their pompous huffing and puffing.

I did take some time out to look over their homepage, just to see if this was an isolated case of idiocy. But of course a quick scan of the messages on the page confirmed that this deviant was in the habit of doing the same thing to others on a regular basis.

Titling themselves as a "critic", the deviant was involved in a slanging match with another user over what the latter claimed was an unprovoked "flame" on some piece of fanart. The troll reacted as most will by claming that his comments were simply the truth and accusing the other user of being infantile for using the term "flame". Which is odd when you consider he used the term "spam" in his exchange with me!

I guess what I want to say is this: is he right?

Am I posting these pictures to an unreceptive audience?

You see that I thought the attention they were garnering and the favourites they have gained meant that someone was interested in seeing them.

I also thought that artistic freedom meant I could post whatever creative outlet took my fancy around here.

Answer me this: what kind of a prick labels themselves as a critic and then proceeds to insult, wheedle and belittle other artists rather than offering any kind of real criticism as to the work they produce?

Do you guys want me to keep working and posting around here, or are you all just being nice to me?

Or is that deviant just full of shit?

Like most people I tend to have something going on in the background whilst I'm working, either some music, BBC Radio 4 or a historical documentary on the tv. Yesterday I'd settled upon a programme called "Britiain's Worst Home", because I have to admit that there's a part of me that loves the aggro you can get on a reality show where someone is deliberately having their buttons pressed.

On the surface this one looked like a good bet, showcasing the homes of some eccentric people around the country and trying to help them overcome their issues as relates to decor.

Firstly there was a woman who had filled her home with pictures, books and other crap all relating to the royal family. She had a lifesize cutout of the queen with a sleeve and glove attached to it so that one might simulate the experience of shaking the royal hand, a disturbing doll that looked more like Chucky than Prince Willam as it was supposed to, but not one picture of her own children.

Next came a man who had spent the last decade filling his flat with the rubbish other people threw away. He had a room full of airfix models, mountains of cardboard boxes and compoments from almost every model of home computer marketed in the UK over the past thirty years.

But the next woman was a mother of two whom the voiceover described as: "Still proud to be a goth". Now that should have set the alarm bells ringing and had me expecting the usual mess of ouijia boards, black candles and inverted crucifixes. But it was not the case in the slightest.

The woman's front room was filled with shelves full of "Living Dead Dolls", the line of dolls that look like a cross between an average doll and Sadako from Ring. Not my cup of tea, but nonetheless a line of products that I think are both original and appealing in their design.

Next we were shown the murals she had painted on the walls of the house: a well executed Egyptian style piece on the corridor wall, an excellent blue dragon in the kitchen and an evocative white and painting of a gothic mansion and female vampire (on the wall of the toilet!).

The voiceover mentions in a smug manner that a meeting of the local resident's association was once held there and never again since. Then we are treated to the opinions of the head of said association as he wanders around this woman's house commenting that he would: "Bury the dolls in the garden" and moaning constantly as he asks the question: "Why can't she have something normal, like a clock on the shelves?"

Now this was comming from a portly man with a shaven head who was fast approaching his middle years and seemed to have as much dress-sense as a slice of roadkill.

I recount all this because it has never failed to amaze me the number of boring and quite sad little people who seem to want to force anyone who thinks, acts or dresses in any way differently to themselves to submit to them, surrender their individuality and become "normal".

Often I imagine the programmes these sad bastards would come up with, somewhat like the "Re-Neducation" centres in the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode, where men will be shaved of all hair and forced to wear shirts, jeans and watch football whilst drinking gassy lager. Women on the other hand will be brainwashed with fashion magazines and tattle-rags, made to listen to the Pussycat Dolls and Girls Aloud and develop vapid and shallow personalities.

My point is that these people are seemingly so sad and insecure that they can't deal with difference or diversity in any way, shape or form.

Please understand them for the pathetic and laughable creatures they are.

And don't pick up a gun against them as has happened in the past.

Just pity them, for they are weak, pathetic and insignificant in the extreme.

After spending last night slaving over a hot laptop, it's time to hand over the internet connection to the other half for her projects and spend an evening trying to get something significant done as regards my marines.

It seems like as good a time as any to take the miniatures out of the acetone and see what I have to play with and where to go from here.

I currently have plans stewing away to create a special character based on Fabius Bile for the Orkskulls chapter, but I'm being hampered by the current GW policy of not selling individual parts by mail order.

I really only need the body of the miniature, but it looks as though I have no choice but to buy the whole thing or wait around until some of the parts come up on ebay.

I long for the days when they'd sell you what you needed!