![Art_Supplies.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmP5b5navYZhhi7ioaKovC7ENkQwCwLTAY3qDUBrdaDyWn/Art_Supplies.jpg)

I attended a funeral for a family friend. This friend became an artist after she retired some twenty years ago.  The family gave away images from her sketchbook after the funeral.

Giving away pictures is a fun way for people to remember a loved one. However, I was sad because I realized that most of the pictures being given away would eventually end up in the landfill.

I used to maintain a sketch book; So I decided to dig through my old art supplies and realized that it had been almost twenty years since the last time that I drew a picture. 

Most of my paints and inks had gone bad through the years. I still had a half dozen sketchbooks with about a hundred sheets of clean paper.

 As I recall, I sold my used sketchbooks in the early days of eBay. I wanted to see how the market valued outsider art. I discovered that a  sketchbook filled with student quality art was worth less than one with blank pages. Since there was no value to keeping a sketchbook beyond my personal self-gratification, I packed up the supplies and pretty much stopped spending money on the hobby.

I worked as a computer programmer and spent a good deal of time thinking about how one could use information technology to help people share outsider art. 

The funeral reminded me about how much I enjoyed drawing and how I regretted giving up on art.

So, I decided to revive my SteemIt account and take a stab at creating an online art project. I will put details of the project on later posts.