I want to share my experience with the digital art streaming community — people who paint or draw live on Twitch or YouTube — because it's a creative context I've participated in on both sides.

Watching streams: the most valuable thing about watching skilled artists stream is hearing them articulate decisions in real time. 'I'm going to push this value darker because the read is competing with the focal area' is information that finished work doesn't give you.

Streaming my own work: I streamed for six months. The audience was small (typically five to fifteen concurrent viewers) but the feedback was occasionally excellent. The unexpected benefit was the same as teaching — articulating my decisions out loud improved my understanding of them.

The social dimension: the streaming community is genuinely collegial in a way that social media posting isn't. Regular viewers develop context for your work. You develop context for regular viewers' work. The relationships are different in quality from typical social media follower relationships.