The sharp-eyed amongst my regular readership [well, one of the two of you] may have noticed a new icon making its debut on the navigation bar at the top of the page—​as well as some informative rollover texts, for those of you who can’t handle the full gamut of having a colossal FOUR options available now, for your navigational pleasure.

The new paintbrush icon will lead you, unerringly, to a new Portfolio Section, wherein you will find various collections of my artistic endeavours.

Why the change? you ask.

Well, up until recently, I’d been maintaining my 'portfolio' [or 'profiterole' as I wittily like to call it] on Behance --Adobe’s online portfolio site. I’d stick the odd collection of artworks, or scanned pages from whatever sketchbook I’d just filled up there, and not really think much more about it. [A fair bit of the same stuff also finds its way on here, in amongst the written offerings]

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I had to send someone a link to examples of my artwork. So, rather than sending them an assortment of links to various relevant posts extracted from this 'ere blog, I just sent them a link to my Behance portfolio.

I wouldn’t have thought any more about it, except one day I happened to visit my Behance page in a browser I don’t usually use and so, because I wasn’t logged into my Behance account with that browser, I saw the page as yer common-or-garden visitor would see it:

Lovely, ain’t it? Anyone visiting my Behance page sees a load of 'No Entry' signs, replacing about half of my portfolio projects.

Clicking on one of the projects in question brings up the following dialogue:

Well, that’s even better isn’t it? Various projects are blocked and anyone clicking on them sees a warning that they contain 'Adult Content' which, in 99,9% of people’s minds, equals porn.

Really nice if, as was the case with me, you’re sending a link to your Behance portfolio to someone, in the hope of securing some work. And, even if that visitor still wanted to see your offerings, they’d have to go through all the hassle of creating and logging into an Adobe account, to do so. Nothing remotely user-friendly, such as an "It’s OK. I’ve got my big boys trousers on. Let me in!" button for them to click and by-pass the warning.

So, anyone without an Adobe account, visiting my Behance portfolio will think that; instead of containing a load of unfunny and badly drawn cartoons, it consists of a load of 'one-handed reading material'.

Thanks a bunch, Behance!

When I subsequently logged into my Behance account and opened one of the projects in question, I was shown the following notice.

So, if I want people visiting my portfolio to be able to see my work without being frightened off by suggestions it’s a load of pornography, I now have to submit half my projects for 'Review'.

Well, coming so soon after my falling foul of Twatter and their arbitrary censorship, I thought to myself handsomely; "Fuck Behance and the horse they rode in on!" and have thus extracted all my work from that website and am self-hosting it here instead.

Whilst I realise that will drop the annual viewing figures for my artwork from "hardly any" to "none", so be it. I am so completely sick to my back teeth of ridiculous American websites censoring anything which they consider remotely "offensive" or "adult"---the list of which seems to grow ever longer by the day.

"Hey, buddy! Want to buy an automatic rifle and several hundred rounds of ammunition? Sure thing. Just down the next aisle, beside the Fruit & Veg section!

But if someone says a naughty word or raises a middle finger, we need to bleep & pixelate it into oblivion, to 'protect' society!

Bunch of fucking tits!

Any road up. My artwork is now and henceforth shall be; self-hosted here on this site. So feel free to give that portfolio button a click and the Portfolio section a peruse.

I must warn you though, you may stumble across the word "fuck" scribbled on a scan of a sketchbook page…​ or witness a childishly unrealistic cartoon drawing of a willy. So please refrain from visiting, if you think it might traumatise you so much you embark on a killing rampage, with your supermarket bought sub-machine gun.