About

WELCOME!

Creative Spark is a discussion community for artists of every breed. All creative people are welcome. We have a very (very!) small staff who run this place for the love of art. We do it in our spare time, and it's all funded by loose change found in our couch cushions. And of course, the beautiful people who have become contributing members. Thank you to our generous donors!

New members are pre-approved to help prevent spam. Please allow up to 24 hours for moderator approval, but most likely much sooner. Check your spam box for your confirmation email if you haven’t received it within a few minutes.

Once approved, we ask that you introduce yourself in the Welcome Center Forum.

We do have a few rules:

• We expect users to show basic civility, etiquette, and respect for all other members and staff.
• We do not engage in artistic censorship, but the forums are moderated to ensure everyone abides by the rules.
• This is not a place to debate or discuss politics, religion, conspiracy theories, or any divisive topics. Those things are not welcome here. We will delete posts that will provoke any kind of discord or argument. Stick to relevant topics (art!).
• Posting lengthy excerpts from other sites (including Wikipedia) is not allowed. We respect the copyrights of others, and too much text from other sites can land us in hot water with Google. And we must not anger the Google gods!
• Do not use the forum only as a place for self-promotion. You're welcome to add your website and contact information to your signature, and members who participate in the community can certainly promote things from time to time. But if you don't participate, you probably shouldn’t advertise.
• We are a human rights, LGBTQ+ friendly community. If you are not, or have any anti-gay, anti-trans views that you just have to express, this is not the place. Any hate speech, disparaging language against physically/mentally disabled people, or any other human beings will be taken very seriously.
• There is a ZERO tolerance to trolls, any toll-like behavior, or anything the staff perceives to be harassing, argumentative, or hostile toward others or the site’s policies. Trolls will be swiftly banned without warning.
• A lot of members from other art-related forums have joined Creative Spark. You may see friends from other forums. Fun! There's no harm in saying hello, but please understand that constantly referring to other community forum sites or using jargon exclusive to those sites is exclusionary, and Creative Spark is inclusionary. You get to start anew here.
• Please do not use uncommon acronyms unless you define them in parentheses. Every time. Remember, we don't want anyone to feel excluded. And really, why use uncommon abbreviations in the first place? Type out the words. DBL (don’t be lazy)!
• We issue warnings when anyone runs afoul of the rules, and we will permanently ban users who disregard the rules at our discretion.
• Finally, we'd just like to stress that the Creative Spark rules are not optional or open for debate with moderators. Respect our guidelines and everyone will respect you. Please and thank you.

A few other things to note:

• You may post up to ten images per post. They will automatically be resized at a maximum of 900 pixels wide.
• You do not have the ability to delete your posts, but you have up to 90 minutes to edit them.
• Conversations are private, but everyone can see your profile posts.
• We do not delete posts or remove all of a user's content on request. For GDPR compliance we will remove identifying profile information when an EU or UK member requests removal (see details below).

We look forward to meeting you and enjoying your participation. Have fun!

GDPR compliance
For European Union General Data Protection Regulation compliance purposes, Creative Spark owns all user-generated content on the site. If an EU or UK member requests data removal, we will remove identifying information such as username and avatar (the existing username and avatar will be replaced by an anonymous author name and avatar), but we will not remove post content. If someone requesting GDPR data removal has used identifying information in specific posts, they can ask that the information be removed from the specific posts by providing the URLs for the posts and specifying which identifying information should be removed. That includes posts made by other members that contain personal data about the GDPR data removal requester.