I can't wait until the free rides end and they finally understand how much their slop actually costs.

Uh... Where, exactly?

::: spoiler (Rough drawing of a confused girl.)

I'm not very good.. •_•
:::

Good point, and I understand where you're coming from. My counterpoint is basically "the best tools to start making art are the ones you already have".

In my case, I had a phone and the ability to download Pocket Paint (think OSS MS Paint), and that's what got me started. For others, it might be basic paints and paper/cheap canvas from a dollar store. For others, it might be crude pigments made from old coffee grounds and charcoal remnants from a hobo fire they came across, applied to junk mail newspaper with kitchen utensils. For still others, it could be a rock and another, harder rock for etching.

Shit, there's people out there making paintings with Excel.

You can always explore different techniques and materials as your interests develop and/or budget allows, but for the person who just wants to start making something, whatever you have on hand that captures your fancy is the best first choice IMO.

Is there a client? Or does everyone just use the webapp?

Lol, here is just fine. I usually put my crap on Art Share (originals using few/no collage elements), or Low Effort Memes (a blissfully permissive community that hasn't given me too much shit for my collage stuff yet).

I'm a firm believer that it's OK to be an amateur in public. Yes, you might get downvotes/people saying you suck/whatever. You might also get tips to improve, or encouragement to keep going. At very least you can point at something publically and say "Hey, I made this!". Maybe someone else points at it and says "I can do better than this", then picks up a tool to try and prove it. Bam - you just made another artist.

Quoting from noted philosopher Violent J: "If he knows what's so dope he should make it himself, and quit fucking judging every-fucking-body else"

This is a good start! Hell, this is what 90% of my drawings looked like when I was a young guy. At a certain point I stopped, and didn't approach art of any kind for decades. An old friend of mine at pretty close the same skill level kept doing it, sharing the results with interested folks, kept honing their craft, and now they're a professional animator with credits in award-winning shows. Thank you for sharing!!

Hell yes. I would rather watch, read and listen to messy outsider art for hours and hours than consume the most polished of artificial material. I don't care how good it looks, how good it sounds, how good whatever. If it's not made by a person it means nothing to me.

EDIT: Since I brought it up... John Frusciante's first couple of albums. So weird yet so good.

Hold up, I always thought James wrote the shitty fanfic, then rewrote so it wasn't a Twilight thing anymore. Curious as to the actual story.

Real question: what do you call art?

I've seen plenty of art here. Subjective quality/technical prowess certainly varies, but art nonetheless.

Fifty Shades started out as a shitty Twilight fanfic (and I use that term loosely here), rather unfortunately named, Master of the Universe, while EL James was going under 'Snowqueens Icedragon,' and she changed some things around before publishing to prevent from getting sued for copyright.

(I use the term 'fanfic' loosely because she pretty much just ripped off Twilight, but replaced vampire references with badly-misinterpreted BDSM references)

I put more effort and care into my Pokemon fanart than EL James put into her shitty Twilight fanfic.

No, but you're on the money with your assumption, EL James writing the shitty fanfic, and then changing it to remove Twilight references before publishing is pretty much the actual story.

mostly why i've increasingly turned to forums like this for that kind of stuff (if i've ever needed). I think that it's in part to a new AI suggestions thing that Google implemented. It also does the videos too i believe. Still a shame it's happening though.

I've also seen some channels I loosely follow start using/ producing AI content unfortunately. All this AI slop on YT has greatly turned me off the platform as of late.