Here's an interesting little phenomenon that's been emerging into consciousness lately. Of course it's previously existed in various artist/oekaki forums, but I mean that when multiple friends of mine start alluding to something, friends who don't know each other, then I understand that to mean that X trend is on the rise and will soon become more popularly known. So maybe in a year everyone and their uncle will produce oekaki and message boards to feature them.

PaintBBS and various "Oekaki"-titled programs are what the kids are using. Oekaki is Japanese for "doodle" or "scribble". That's what these people are doing: using a simplistic graphics program to create their illustrations. Of course, they're pushing the envelope to staggering heights and creating some really fantastic work. I might practice with this program but I'm immediately outclassed by these other, more dedicated and better talented artists who command a deep and rich mastery of this silly little program.

What follows is, of course, a small gallery of artists who wholly or in part participate in these myriad oekaki programs and store their work on a personal website. Just dink around and click things until you find all the pictures. It's really interesting to see how much they're able to accomplish with tiny little canvases and simple graphics programs. Obviously they're very talented, driven producers of artwork, and I think the capability of graphic control changes from site to site. Still, just going through all their personal pages and ocmparing the results can be fascinating indeed.