When I was young, I loved Neopets.

I can still recall that my first neopet was a red Wocky named Dominino (I could not spell). I was so excited to have a little digital creature to love and call my own. I loved that other people had their own creatures and that they drew such interesting art of their pets and other people's pets and pot them on their petpages. I wanted to do that too. I wanted to draw my guy and show it to other people and share how much affection I had for these cute things.

However, this was a struggle. It was roughly 2004 and my family did not own a tablet, a scanner, or any sort of device with which to take pictures. While this was a blessing for the privacy of my youth, it also made me feel starry-eyed over the artists on the internet. I wanted to be there with them. So I took my mouse and opened up MS Paint and drew the newest Neopet: Ruki. I never knew how to get paintbrushes as a kid, so he was just red. But I saw other people customizing their pets to be different than the website's artwork and I wanted to do that too, so I gave my red Ruki ladybug spots on their shell.
Proud of my work, I stared on it on my computer screen... and had no idea what to do next. How did people upload art to Neopets dot com? How did people share it? I couldn't go on the forums yet, I wasn't old enough and I never lied about my age on the internet, so I couldn't gain access. It felt like my poor MS Paint Ruki drawing was in purgatory.

I can't recall how it happened, but years later (sometime in middle school), I discovered deviantArt and this magical thing called a drop down menu under the "file type" field of the Save menu. Equipped with a deviantArt account, I was ready to show my Neopets fanart to the world. Except, at this point, I was making edgy Powerpuff Girls OCs and OCs based off of different fears I had as a child.

I loved deviantArt. I loved organizing my art. I loved looking at other people's art on the Newest Uploads page. I loved commenting about things that I liked about work I was seeing. I loved being surrounded by art. I loved art and I still love art. My love of digital art inspired me to get my degree in Graphic Design. My favorite part about being a person online is being able to see art from people around the globe of different skill levels that I would never be able to see if I gave up being online. The galleries and the groups and the favorites and the custom profiles all made me feel so excited to make things on dA. For more than ten years, I've been friends with people I met in a Pokemon gijinka roleplay group on dA and they still inspire me to create to this day.

I'm not sure exactly when or how the transition to Tumblr and then to Twitter took place, but I really think it left me with a sort of nomadic feeling. After leaving deviantArt, there was no longer this one site on the internet that was my favorite place to be. At one point, I thought my favorite place was Tumblr. At one point, I hardly spent a moment thinking about how my art could exist online outside of my portfolio work.

Currently, I'm content. I don't need to be a world famous or even internet famous artist. Seeing my work all collected somewhere is enough for me to feel satisfied. Connecting with even one other artist in any place I end up on this world wide web makes me feel like it was worth being there. All I want to do with my art is show it to other people who might enjoy it as well. I want to create art because I can't help it. I love creating art. And I love seeing art. I love commenting on other people's pieces and letting them know that they've connected with someone else through something they've created. It's something I've felt like I've been missing from other sites. Tumblr's tags add some commentary and connection, but there's a sort of etiquette on there that feels confusing and complicated to the casual enjoyer. Twitter is a nightmare for art and communication. TikTok is not for me.

So here I am on Sheezy.Art, hoping to connect with other artists and lift them up. I want to tell you what I like about your work. I don't need anything in return. I'm just proud of you for putting yourself out there. It's hard to do. I hope we're able to grow together. I hope that for as long as this website exists, there is some connection between us artists on this world wide web.