So. Yay. Art. Finally.
For only the third time in my internet life, I am going to openly endorse a site = Artician.com

A couple days ago, I received a random invite, and I was all set to ignore it and move on with my life, but it was such a polite request, I took a poke at it and have since become all excited about it.

It rocks so much it actually got me to post more than a one-liner in lj for once!

Well, okay...right now, it is still charmingly buggy, but I'm very impressed with what I'm seeing so far. This is exactly the sort of site I've been waiting for...somewhere between a comprehensible portfolio-share and an actually *fun* social network for artists. I don't think this is for everybody, but I predict this is finally the dA-alternative we've been waiting 4+ years to come along. If you have any sort of at least semi-professional portfolio, this is worth investigating :

• It has a friendly but compelling multi-navigation that reminds me of Etsy, a Flickr-like set and tag-system, and a search engine that actually seems to work. Thumbnail rotation and cross-pollination exposure is immense already...which means "popular" submissions won't eternally detract from constant variety and most-favorited items won't dominate browsing.
• Customization...on an art site! Profiles can actually have a personalized (but still legible and site-coherent) color-scheme and lay-out. Nice available starter skins and the ability to mess around in CSS, too.
• Easy to comment, reply to, fav and link-share. You can embed thumbnails into posts even. Looks like unlimited storage, too. (We'll see if the rating-star system ends up being a good idea, though....)
• Rockin inspirational palette-break-down under each image. Such a simple little thing that makes it uber-obvious this site is intended for designers.
• I dig the option to import feeds (which effectively replaces Facebook for me, actually...)
• Mostly, I love the possibility that I'll finally have the chance to actually post my ART somewhere. My actual, personal illustration work that I've kept off of deviantArt for years and years because I was terrified of their ToS regarding copyright ownership. (I don't intend to fully abandon dA because there is - and always probably will be - a good fandom community there...but since I've regulated it to fan-art and cosplay submissions only, I had no place to post my completely original artwork.)