This morning, chillaxing on the weekend, I took a moment to reflect on beauty in the world. There've been a healthy wealth of post-processed snapshots from the Grid in the Second Life Flickr group, and a large portion of my passions recently has been taking digital landscapes, and making them painterly. In doing so, you might not know (without me telling you) where the source came from, but SL's home to a growing number of choice locations which can be captured.

Wouldn't it be incredible to walk through something like the below in realtime? I don't have many references, but the film What Dreams May Come is an easy cite. "Living paintings" are exciting to me, and while we aren't going to get any authentic clumped brush feels anytime soon, SL's graphics are getting better (and dare I say, more gamelike).

Influenced, I was looking up artists like Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross; before I go further, the word "kitsch" makes me smile, and I thought: "What would Second Life kitsch paintings look like?" I don't think I've fully succeeded at this, but some of what I did — light rays tracing through the trees, varied vignette effects, and the sun smiling through with saturation — certainly amuses me. But beyond the first bursts of cheap laughter, I do find an inner peace in these works, and I hope you're inspired too.

Next up, I've taken piccies of some really crowded, chaotic areas on the Mainland, and I'm considering how to make them appear tranquil and beautiful. Jumbled ad farms and double-decked skyboxes aren't something found in the offline world, so this, as eyesoreish and undesired as it may be, is a unique part of Second Life.