ford wrote:along with what everyone is saying above, the problem with the off oekaki art boards is that... nobody really pays attention to them at all. posting your art there or selling adopts or anything really is basically just leaving your art to rot with no attention.
also, locking every singe oekaki piece with offsite art below it completely ruins the community aspect. i personally hate using chicken paint. it's confusing, has limited tools and sizes, it's too clunky, and runs way too slow on my laptop. but i'd still love to take part in the community with species myos or character for characters!
sure, i could post the characters in the thread, or dm the characters to the person i drew them for, but i feel like that... would be just as, if not more, spammy than a cover? i mean, would you rather scroll through a thread of dozens of large images, have your dms spammed with art being sent, or... have a nice, clean gallery to go through and see each entry, both off and on oekaki together so they don't get lost?
not gonna get too much into this discussion, but i do agree.
as i do find it easier to navigate the oekaki boards by far. i hardly hear anyone ever talk or use the art boards honestly, from what i've seen. chicken paint is really hard for me to use, due to the lack of tools. my main problem with chicken paint is the canvas sizing. it's so impeccably hard to draw on that it's painful and hurts my hands to some degree trying to use a small space is extremely hard. lots of people have used oekaki for off-posting art, and it's not an uncommon sight on oekaki, even for bigger artists, and smaller ones. i find it really hard to use chickenpaint and it limits my artistic ability to some degree. the red lock has become infamous, and for good reason. if there's going to be a lock on the canvas, i'd make it small in a corner. having a giant red lock is extremely inconvenient and infurating.
made a quick example;

[ this image is not locked, just took the lock symbol and placed it over a doodle as an example of what it would be better looking like. this way it's not in your face, but you know it's there.]
i think chickenpaint does need an update to some extent honestly. the oekaki is a major part of the boards, and where a lot of members reside.