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Hello! My name is Willem S. van der Merwe. I was born in 1972, Pretoria, South Africa. I started painting and drawing at the age of 5. I stopped doing that for a while to study some other fields, but recently I've been getting back into it. I love wildlife and nature, but I also paint or draw people. I also paint and draw fantasy creatures or scenes, as well as extinct animals.
For commissions, contact me here or by email:
hi, willem! hope you're well. i wanted to ask if you have pages for your art outside of dA? at some point i'd like to leave (unsure if it'll happen yet, but), but i would definitely love to keep up with your art.
Hello! I'm fine still, and you?
Well thanks a lot for wanting to keep watching my stuff! At the moment I don't have art on display outside of DA .., why do you want to leave? If you find a nice alternative site, could you tell me? I think it would be good not to have everything just in one place ...
i'm managing, a lot going on but still around and that's what matters most!
i have a hard time supporting dA at this point in time and would like to focus elsewhere, but moving audiences is hard. 😵💫 that's unfortunately another thing, though: there aren't many great alternatives, especially those with a decently-sized userbase. i enjoy instagram okay, but their dimension limitation can be restricting with posts, and meta is. certainly something. tumblr is pretty nice for artists, just being found can be a struggle (the same goes for instagram). i also enjoy cara quite a lot, i respect its creator and deeply appreciate their anti-genAI stance, but it's still a pretty small site. bluesky is okay. i'll let you know if i do find one that i really enjoy as a dA alternative!
Thanks a lot for watching. I appreciate the support. Have a nice creative week. Best regards 
Thank you very much for the 
Happy Late Birthday!
