Runnin' Freely

You can really tell what a beautiful horse this is. Looks like a great mover. Excellent painting.

Thanks Gudrun for your great comment...much appreciated!

Hi Cheryl, what a lovely picture, keep meaning to try the inktense pencils, but just love graphite.

Lovely painting, great movement and energy.

Hey Cheryl have you been following the paintmyphoto saga over last 2 days its Wednesday 24th July today, yesterday Roy SImmons tarted a discussion about people being touted to comment on and 'like' other people's work, I had a feeling they were having a dig at me over this, when I last there replies to it were over 1,000! I added my two penneth, saying I think it may be about me as when I posted my Nelson Mandela had to post it on my blog page as i had no photo for it and there wasn't one on the site, and i had about 5 comments on it, but they were great comments, I quickly realised if I could get more people to see it I was going to get a lot more comments it because of the size of that website! So I upped my comment rate, everyone whose work I liked the look of I commented on a number of their works and invited them back to comment on my Nelson portrait and leave a like if they felt it was worth it, by the end I had 60 comments on it and over 600 viewings, I never made any secret of the fact that inset out to get more people to look at it, but I did not know what response I would get, anyway after a while I realised how many of those commenters were sending me 'friend' requests as well, in fact my friend rate doubled so I never felt like people objected to what I was doing or why would they want to be friends! Anyway I put all all his in my reply to Roy's discussion, and boy did I end up wishing I hadn't bothered to contribute to that! Some of the people who were also 'friends' with me contributed and were coming out with things like they couldn't believe anyone would want to try to persuade others to comment or 'like' their work and those who did that must be desperate for attention and things like that, and how it was a form of 'gaming' or rigging the figures to get higher up the leaderboards! Anyway Roy emailed me saying I could see the strength of feeling about it so he was formally telling me to stop doing it. (Continued in next comment)

So in some of the replies to his discussion yesterday I noticed some well known names on the pmp site saying they used the sites multi email function to let their 'friends' know when they posted a new work, and I had a new pastel portrait to post this morning, so I did the something I did the multi email but only to people WHO HAD APPROACHED ME to be THEIR site friend, I simply said I had a new pastel portrait on the site if they wanted to see it, and hen I didn't give it a second thought, until around tea time today when I tried to get onto the website, well I could not get on it, I have been banned!!! I was given the option to send an email to Roy Simmons so I did, asking why I had been banned, his reply was that I had not stopped asking people to comment on my work, and that no further discussion would be entered into!!! Can you believe this Cheryl, I have been banned from the damn website, I mean don't you think it is ridiculous! No one has ever had to comment on my work and I have never given anyone that impression but everyone who I wanted to get over to take a look at my gallery received a number of my comments on their work, so they were getting something out of it as well, and they were quite happy to get those comments from me whether they reciprocated on ,my work or not, it seems to me Roy Simmons as the founder of the pmp site was feeling backed into a corner with this one and when I jumped in and added my reply he saw an easy way out and took it, I will never understand with this one w people cold contact me to be a site friend with them because they liked my work and yet could be so quick to apparently complain about me, I should have said in my email to Roy does this mean he is going to stop those people who use multi email from doing that anymore under threat of being banned from the site, highly unlikely as some of them are website admin! Anyway I ave droned on enough now Cheryl, but I won't be on pmp anymore unfortunately!!!

Hi Cheryl, got your comment of course, what I would say in reply is that you have not made any points really that I have not covered in my explanation of my side of this to you, why would I need so many so many comments? Surely that is self explanatory1 who wouldn't! Having to post things in blog pages is also a poor option, and people in their comments to me freely admitted that they never look beyond the main gallery and they thanked me for drawing their attention to that work, because of how much they liked it and because if I did not do that they would never have seen it, I wanted to see how many comments I could get on it, how popular it old be; as for why did I send that multi email which apparently was wrongly seen by some as me appearing to ask or comments, I covered that one as well in my comment to you, in those replies to Roy's discussion people where saying they used but only to let other site members they were 'friends' with on the site and simply to say that they had posted a new artwork, well that is exactly what I did, no more and no less, I only sent that email to people who had already approached me to be 'friends' with them on that pmp site, not to anyone else! And Roy's email to me never mentioned about sending hat sort of contact to 'friends' on the site and like I said in my email back to him what is he saying now that there is one rule for me and another for others and in particular the admin staff because some of them are amongst the people who use multi emails to let people know they have new work on the site; as for why would I want comments that were in any way coerced or disingenuous, those commenced where so good and so generous about that work and again some of those commenters thanked me for what I had done and especially for how I had gone about doing because they appreciated the comments on their work that they got from me and wanted to come back and look at my work and in particular at that one,

What I would say Cheryl is those three points you made in our reply on here to me included the main points that those 1,000 or so replies to Roy's discussion made, and they were all every one of them missing the point entirely, I did want to see how many comments I could get, but i did not obviously force anyone to reply and indeed many didn't and of course that is fine, some people only commented on it because they saw how much attention it was getting, read one one or two of those comments and realised they needed to have a look, even the one woman who had replied to the discussion saying she felt obliged to comment and that she could not really not do because she would fly she would have stood out too much if she had not done, she missed the point entirely as well by thinking that as obviously there were many who did not comment, and like I said that was fine they did not stand out or draw more attention to themselves, I think the way Roy handled and replied to the replies left by others potentially almost steered the results of the discussion, it could be said he manipulated it to those results, hopefully you can see now that none of he points made actually applied, this was never about me not having confidence in my own ability or in my work and therefore appearing to garner almost false comments or likes, those comments left were all glowing people really loved the work, and as some said if it had been in the main gallery there would have been more comments on it anyway but it was not on there, probably the biggest support to the email I sent was those other people including some admin staff who admit that they use it as away of getting 'friends' to check out their new work so clearly they have realised that does not always happen naturally, pmp is such a big site it is easy for things simply to get lost on it and just it seen!