oh man, hearing about the early years of oekaki sites is really cool. i only got acquainted with them in the early 2010s, but like you said, the large majority of those sites started facing major inactivity by then before they got shut down..
i was a bit too young and inexperienced with digital art around the time to contribute much, so i was a lot more prone to lurking. i wish i could remember the names of some independently ran furry ones i used to frequent and marvel over too though, because i just have the haziest recollection of there being some lovely kemono styled art that i looked up to on there! the others that i checked in on every once in awhile consisted of misc. image board oekaki corners, and that same tegaki e. while both places did (and do) lack serious moderation and upkeep, or leaned into nsfw territory, there was still a good chunk of artwork that stood out to me and kept me coming back. like seeing people's out of the box oc's, worldbuilding, or comics, that they were able to push to the limits regardless of the tools and while making exceptional use of the format. super inspiring stuff. my fav bit was seeing the wild style variety and just how much any random character could gain enough genuine interest and support from the communities, to spark fanart or new lore over, which i always found really sweet. just making art for art's sake. i didn't even know some of tegaki's artists got their foot in the industry door, but it also doesn't surprise me one bit given what incredible artwork that place was a home to.

another huge thing for me was getting to see some of the playback videos, which show a timelapse for the process on any given oekaki drawing. to better understand how the artists i looked up to actually went about painting and sketching, and i think that did wonders for helping the way i think about art. another huge site that featured this, and got shut down on short notice without a trace in 2019, was "drawr" from the jp art website pixiv. it focused a lot more on anime-esque styles and only really gave you one layer and one resizable brush with varying opacity too. i would spend countless hours on there just scrolling through the galleries and practicing alongside the timelapse videos that every post had, like quiet art streams to study with and from. it's another big thing i miss and wish there was an updated clone site for, but most i can do now is make a copycat brush in other art programs just to mimic the experience and iconic rendering style it really put on the map for me. i'm sure there has to be an archive of some of its posts out there, but it's really sad how little mention i see of it nowadays despite how long it was up for and its closing only being that recent..

my only real experience with actually participating in an oekaki-type community akin to all of this though, was through being fairly active in the miiverse servers on the 3DS. where its own art tools were also heavily limited, but the art community still went pretty hard. i spent a lot of time in the different game sections (especially for ac:nl!) to make fanart on my tiny og 3DS screen, and i met lots of talented artists on there. we'd all draw our favorite characters and interactions for one another in the comments, and it was exceptionally welcoming to boot, which made it feel like a safe haven for the late nights i'd stay up working away at the tiniest detailed art. so i thought of it as a handheld version of tegaki based on the amount of rp threads all made with handwritten and hand-drawn posts. it's just such a shame that nintendo made it such a hard unmoderated place to stay in after awhile, before shutting down its servers just like the rest of them.

-

it was only up until recently that i started looking into all of these places and communities again. something about joining this forum kind of sparked that reaction. in wanting to go through more sites and hobbies i hadn't been able to fully participate in throughout their prime, and just flat out missed from my younger years. plus, seeing how much you're able to do in a limited browser based art program, is honestly pretty motivating and fun to figure out for me. so thank you for even mentioning stuff like paintberri since i hadn't heard of it before!
i only started checking out tegaki e's revival and actually got to finally drawing on it just this past week alone, so i'm still figuring out my way around it, but i really love how much of a "game" it makes out of art too. wrestling with its simple features and having to think a little bit more before laying down colors due to no eyedropper tool, has surprisingly pulled me out of an art funk i was facing for the past while. while it can be kind of a pain, i think the one layer and limited color palette aspects to it, is what separates it from the other oekaki formats that're still up. the inconvenience of its own rules and missing components makes any finished piece feel like that much more of an accomplishment that i want to keep getting better at. it even makes me want to adopt those same limitations into my normal drawing habits for funsies. i also like that you can get as eccentric and ambitious as you want within its canvas, or take it really easy and mellow out from there not being any real expectations, unlike how posting on busier social media spaces feels like to me. just a homey sort-of-hidden digital sketchbook with not that many users (and a surprisingly nice turnout of sparkledogs), where sky's the limit if you want it to be. here's what i cooked up on it pretty recently!


running your own oekaki sounds like a blast too though! i'd love to try my hand at doing that someday, but for now i think i'm mostly content with just checking out a little bit of everything (chickensmoothie is next on my radar, lol). on that same note, i did manage to find a newer site that's also individually hosted and runs most of the major oekaki programs in one place to test the waters on. it seems a bit slow but it also has moderation + no r18 allowed, so maybe others would be interested in it if they'd like to get to drawing immediately too! oekaki.freakphone.net

YESSS This is so real!! Stuff that wouldve had "no chance" on say, deviantart, got to have their own life and appreciation on smaller scale communities like tegaki. I don't think I'd be the same artist I am without the creativity and encouragement of the artists on there  <3
I was also a huge fan of how commonplace it was to reply to an entry with a little fanart of the character- Something I see has carried over to its current incarnation It was a great excuse to abruptly give people gift art and getting a doodle of my OC was such a day brightener!


Oh dang, I forgot about that feature but what you described really opened that memory back up!! The BUILT IN speedpaint! It's kind of incredible to me that a playback feature was possible back then, given how I've only seen it come back very recently in procreate & clip studio. It gave the impression that it was a lot more high tech of a feature than it is, maybe? *doesn't know how this stuff works*


*GETS BLASTED* OMG DRAWR!!!!! YOOOO HOW did I forget drawr!? Gosh yeah it really did just.. fizzle out quietly...   _{(at least from my perspective- I'm sure the actual pixiv community talked about it wahah)} I never personally drew on the site, but it was a huge artistic inspiration in all my lurking. I remember going in the drawr hashtag on tumblr to see art that was reposted (ideally, by the actual artists) and it was always the most beautiful stuff I would've never seen otherwise. The stuff people made in that applet just hit different, I can't explain it.. if u know u know

This memory you've shared is so beautiful and awesome :3 I didn't realize miiverse was so poppin until long after it's shutdown! There's something so cozy and quiet about drawing on the 3ds, I imagine it was a nice respite from the larger internet. I think if I'd known about it, I would've been such a menace LOL like "Mom says I can't use my laptop or phone after 9pm... but she doesn't know I GOT MIIVERSE!!!!"

OH HEY! HEY!! I commented on that drawing you posted, I really liked it!! I think you got the spirit of the site to a T already- Working in those limitations and making something despite it all!! And what you made is like, super good and inspiring. It made me want to try and get some pretty looking thin lines, too! (tho my attempts didn't get posted) 
The quiet and relaxed nature of modern tegaki also makes it super appealing, like you said. I like that there's no. um. Likes! No notes.. no visible follower count..* We're literally just drawing out here. Art for the sake of art, hellll yesss!!  (and yeah omg the influx of sparkledogs... I really love to see it!) 


_{*likes and follower counts were a feature on the original tegaki, so this is just a happy accident that the webmaster never re-implemented them}

I remember breifly being on a pretty prominent pokemon oekaki and I'm curious if it was the same one, but IIIII don't remember the name so there's no way to know :'D It had a green default background, that's all I recall. I'm really happy people were encouraging to you!! I mostly remember negativity from TeamArtail, So I'm hoping that kindness was more commonplace in other communities & that the sonic fandom was just.. that type of way LOL 
I actually didn't really touch the main site of TA, just the oekaki- It COULD be that the nastiness and vitriol was contained to there + specifically to around 2008? My unfortunate little window of activity. Regardless I'm happy to hear that it wasn't as overwhelmingly present as I remembered :')



YESSS I second this if it's at all possible. When I hosted my own, I didn't have to think about server space- My older coder sibling handled the hard stuff for me :'3 



TY both for your oekaki links/suggestions!! Hopefully my reply isn't too disjointed i'm like a baby bird who just discovered how quotes work today . love and peace

i would love a teensyangl oekaki!! i never got to participate in them, i didn't even really know what they were until it was much too late, so itd be very fun to experience one for the first time in a really cool community ^^

aaa reading your responses got me so giddy!!

i'm in the exact same boat because my early intro to drawr was also from tumblr reposts! the fact it went out so quietly is doubly surprising considering just how many of its posts made up the tumblr art tags back then, and it really felt like a powerhouse for creativity and cool art across the web. so i would've imagined more of an uproar or buzz, before and after its shutdown, even from its outsiders. i ended up looking into it a little bit more too, and really it was just the death of flash that caused it to go down. pixiv's only note on considering future flash alternatives for it, was also in consideration of the possible security risks those could bring to the site too...so it sadly wasn't enough to justify keeping it up.
pixiv even made a newer similar site, and mobile app, called "pixiv sketch" that's still up now sans the timelapse flash-based feature. except its community doesn't solely rely on posting creations made through the app's built in drawing program, so it doesn't feel the same either.

i did come across a few attempts to archive drawr's timelapse videos, but it seems like the people behind the main domain didn't keep it up for long. the next best thing is the archival efforts for the art png's alone, that're on the wayback machine and internet archive! which were a really nice blast to the past for me, and seeing the outpour of skill completely blows my mind even now. i don't remember drawr's original r18 policies though, so i won't directly link those here just in case.
god yeah miiverse was insanely fun!! pretty sure it was some people's first experience with digital art too, which added to the charm. it was also definitely unhinged, in a good way, because it was essentially a more permanent hub for the kind of stuff that still gets drawn in splatoon's plaza nowadays. i think it would've been way too powerful had it kept going, honestly.
i wish i could've seen what everyone got up to in its later years, but i'm pretty happy with the time i did spend on its launch. i even managed to dig up some of my older posts from back then with the all the talk about those memories, too! i think the funniest thing for me in seeing these, and remembering how much time i spent trying to cram in the details, was how i even wished i had a wii-u at the time if just to use the bigger screen for miiverse LOL


WOAH incredibly small world, and thank you sm!! i'm definitely looking forward to drawing on there more later. i was even lurking for a good bit before trying my hand at it, and your art had totally caught my eye too, so it's really nice to see you here!!

there's still a ton i'm slowly figuring out, but some of its secrets still feel like huge mysteries to me. like some people managing to post separate progress snapshots of one drawing?? wild stuff to a very clueless me!
i completely agree on the lack of notes/likes and followers displayed too though. i think it takes a huge amount of edge off, and in turn promotes that inner self drive to make something purely because you feel like it and want to vs anything else. i feel like it's what encourages people to actually go out of their way to interact with one another directly, to show their support too. while making some of the coolest responses in the comments that completely mesmerize me. on the features note, i'll even admit, another nice personal thing is seeing tegaki's lack of "time spent drawing: 20years 12hours 2mins" display that most oekaki boards have too, because i don't need people to know the ungodly amount of time i spend working.............
i'm fourthing this too, by the way! if it's at all possible and not too much hassle to look into, i really think a future oekaki board for teensyangl would be cool. especially given how many artists are already here.

aah true, but i had thought an oekaki board could at least get hosted on a neocities page (or individually hosted domain) like the few modern ones i've seen sprouting up. exactly due to proboards' limitations to forums, but only if more people were interested and had the know-how to get a project and sister-site like that going!