This is a dark place. Most art will leave you feeling inspired, maybe even joyful — if not a little thoughtful. But not this art. This is a place of paint drinking gremlins with caustic burns on our hands and ink stains on our feet. A dark, damp basement smelling of bleach and burning and bioplastics, of empty wallets and ephemeral passions, of education, of science. Most art makes people better, but this place can only make you worse, poorer, stained, and consumed by the craft. Welcome to The Grind and Bind Art Alchemist’s Guild. An artist’s community for the kind of people who don’t just paint, they scavenge pigment from rotten leftovers. It’s for potters who build their own kilns and dig their clay up from river beds, and for weavers who spin their own wool from the fleece they sheared that morning. All flavors are welcome. Talk about your materials, your processes, post art lore, discuss art-adjacent topics, and share your pieces for questions, praise and critique. How it goes: Be kind Do onto others with kindness and civility. Be curious. Follow the instance rules. Images: All posts must have an image, even if you’re asking for advice. Post your cat, or your neighbour’s cat, whatever. This isn’t the community for AI unless you built it yourself and trained it off your own work. Please attribute appropriately. Tag NSFW if necessary. Content & Tags [Show and Tell]— Show off your finished or mostly finished pieces, your DIY art-making materials such as paints, spun wool, brick kilns, bioplastics reactor, etc. [Advice Wanted] — “How do you…?” and “Please help, something exploded,” kind of thing. [Info] — Free, online information on DIY media. Please include a webarchive link if a site asks for personal details. [Discussion] — In the huddle of stained alchemists, debates and hugs are equally encouraged. (Mods only) [Challenge] — Try something new or show off your niche skills. [Misc] — Anything that doesn’t fit in the above categories yet still vibes with the community. On Self-Promotion We all need to put food in the ferret bowl, but let’s not talk money here. If someone asks to buy something, please take it to DMs. !artmarket@lemmy.world [/c/artmarket@lemmy.world] is geared toward self promotion. — Icon drawn by Wren Banner image taken by Cottonbro on Pexels — This is a new community, the structure and rules may change without notice. All things are ephemeral. Go head and shoot Wren a DM if you have any ideas for this place or want to help out.