Help an artist! Answer some questions!

[rom65536]

(1) When you're not here on OA, where do you go on the web?

Youtube, various content-streaming sites (netflix, etc.) a couple other writers forums in different genres

(2) What are your favorite books, movies, games, and TV shows? 

Books: Good fantasy. Bad sci-fi. Lots of that weird 70s crap that was both good fantasy and bad sci-fi at the same time. I care much more for the story than the props on stage in the story. You can tell the same story in just about any setting if you are both talented enough and try hard enough.
Video games: Well - since the early 1980s when video games made the scene in a big way, I've always been kind of a game loyalist. I find a game I like and play it to death. Highlights include Ladder (Donkey Kong knock-off written for the CP/M operating system back in 1982), Jumpman Junior (C64 expanded Donkey Kong knock-off from 1983) Impossible Mission (C64 puzzle/platformer from 1984) Doom & Doom II (FPS from early to mid 90s) Quake (fps from mid to late 90s) Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 1 and 2 (PS2 3rd person fantasy action/rpg), the last few years has been Minecraft (digital lego) and the Fallout games (sci-fi action rpg). Since modern times, I tend to gravitate to games with a strong modding community. In college, I wrote several Quake game overhaul mods.

(3) What magazines and blogs do you read?

none
For youtube/vlog content I'm partial to DIY kind of stuff. Everything from blacksmithing to home metal casting to DIY electronics projects, etc. etc.

(4) What causes do you care about the most?

I like long walks on the beach and really want to see World Peace.
Seriously, one of my topics of interest is destroying consumerism and corporate oligarchy through science and self-sufficiency. The end goal would be something like Star Trek's replicators or an OA consumer-grade nanoforge. With that we'd no longer demonize honesty, charity and kindness, and we'd stop (or at least slow down on) rewarding theft, fraud and abuse of others. I believe that if people could have whatever they want, they wouldn't want as much as they already have.

(5) Who are your favorite artists?

Assuming visual media such as painting/drawing for "artist"
Edward Hopper
Neal Adams
John Romita, Jr.
Ron Lim

(6) What gets you excited about an art piece?

As a writer, I'm partial to everything telling a story - and I want that story to be both easy to see and not "beating the audience over the head".  Too blatant and heavy-handed, and it turns into a piece of propaganda or a sermon. Too subtle and it won't find a wide audience. Both Hopper and Adams are masters of this. If you look at Hopper's "Nighthawks" and don't wonder what kind of day the man in the hat that's facing away has had (and don't imagine that he's some sort of private eye unraveling a murder or secret agent that's just had a hard day fighting enemy spies) then there's something wrong with your head. If you don't hear a smooth jazz horn playing softly and imagine that the tired diner worker is a little grumpy and surly, you're missing the point of the piece. And the shockingly over-dressed red headed woman....Damsel in distress? Femme Fatale? Both? Neither? And what the hell is the green thing she's looking at? Supposedly it's a sandwich, but I doubt that.
The other end of this spectrum is Jackson Pollock. His "art" doesn't tell a story...doesn't even suggest a story. "Number 5" it's called? Nah, looks more like "Number 2" to me. 
But what do I know? I'm evidently a Philistine. I've got the physical size for it, I guess. Hell - in my list of four artists, I put one realist and three comic book artists (those guys are good at telling a story with pictures *shrug*)