Yikes! I just discovered there was a terrible delay in download times since my last major edits a few weeks ago! I traced the problem to a new plugin used to display random images on my home page (one each time you reload the page). I have deactivated and replaced that plugin, and all is well again. Sorry for the delays!!!
Image: Edward Munch’s “The Scream”
Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard
91 cm × 73.5 cm, 1893
(in the public domain in the United States)
Well, it didn’t take long for my newly redesigned website and blog (which I unveiled in March) to get to the point where one more thin mint would have caused the whole thing to explode.
I started with a design with which I was quite content, but then added one more widget after another until my initial neat and clean and well-thought out design was starting to look pretty junky. WordPress and the bazillions of developers working madly away like little hamsters creating new gadgets and what-nots to “enhance” one’s blog — not to mention all the Web 2.0 doo-dads to connect with friends and communicate across apps — make it oh-so-easy to get out of control. I should know better.
Since I created my first art website design about 10 years ago, my site has gone through alternating periods of expansion and contraction. This contraction happened sooner than expected, though. I guess I succumbed to the “ooh-shiny” syndrome. It’s great that WordPress gives you the option of having a website AND a blog, all in one, but there’s a a trade-off to be made. Most artist websites benefit from a clean and simple interface that does not compete with showing your work to best advantage. Most blogs, on the other hand, encourage multiple opportunities for making connections with others online. Websites, too, need to make a good first impression.
So, I have done a little remodel and some streamlining to bring the whole thing back to a slightly cleaner and simpler interface, much like my previous website design. I have moved the Blog from the front page, replacing it with a simple random image of my work. I removed all sidebar widgets but one, adding them progressively as you get deeper into the website. The Blog pages contain all sidebar widgets. I also consolidated some pages, and did a little editing.
This all started when I was going to add two new galleries of work to my site, then decided to clean up my art database that feeds those pages, and then it just snowballed from there.
I hope the new navigational structure works for my readers. Please let me know what you think — better, worse, or just a change to get used to?
Posted in Category:
Design | tags:
website redesign |
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Treasure Chest
Today I’m participating in a collaborative online project with other art bloggers. We are re-posting one of our favorite posts from our blogs. I chose to re-post some notes from art school from way back when, because I find these tips personally useful to review every so often, especially this year when I am exploring various other avenues in my creative process. Perhaps other artists will find some of these tips helpful, too.
I also recommend that you view the post from the organizer of this project, Seth Apter, on his blog The Altered Page. It’s a gorgeous, compelling and inspiring piece.
You can link to all participating artists from the Treasure Chest post on Seth’s blog.
Finally, the piece above is a brand new work called “Alien Gate,” a 9″x12″ mixed media painting on watercolor paper, part of my new series, Paintings from the Hot, Hot Summer of 2009. So here’s my Buried Treasure:
Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.
Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.
When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.
What are your personal, specific goals?
Colors: similar vs. somber vs. stronger.
Realism vs. abstraction – both successful, maybe in combination.
Consider excitement of surfaces vs. complex images. Patterns on blanket, individual parts developed, keep to whole color – add pink, red, clear blue, zingier color.
Keep exciting in earlier stages.
Develop through series of big changes to work out issues.
Series of patterns; sincerity, passion.
Beware of making shadows that are a hole to hell (i.e., too dark) – gap in thinking color rather than value.
Take inventory – look at beautiful drawings in museum.
Strange mix of sacred and profane.
Baroque art: look at Poussin, Rubens’ sketches, Rembrandt, make drawings about what interests you — movement, etc.
Overlap some things.
Check a variety of approaches; work on sense of design.
Look at Eric Fischl – palette in realistic landscape.
Wed. evening. If you see this message, there are still some anomalies happening on my art pages, while I do some database upgrading. It should not affect the the rest of the site.
UPDATE: Thursday morning; most pages are working, except the Tornado paintings; trying to find where the glitch is.
UPDATE 2: Late Thursday evening (or rather, early Friday Morning): Success, at last, and I went ahead and did some reorganization and editing. Hope you like it.
Abstract #10, oil and wax medium on canvas, 30″ x 24″, 1992
I’m joining a small movement some of my online art friends started of posting on Fridays a Flashback to previous works. I found out about the Flashback Fridays from Steven LaRose, who in turn credits Carla Knopp for starting this movement, and adds Mary Addison Hackett as the next artist to join the ranks of Flashback Friday posters. So there are at least 4 of us. Is anyone else doing this?
Anyway, this is a painting I did in advanced painting studio while in art school, 1992. I was experimenting with wax medium, palette knives, and abstraction — and this came out. The process was very nearly identical to the process I am using now — just starting somewhere and seeing where the brushes (or palette knives or whatever tools and media I am exploring at the moment ) lead me.
Sometimes this process leads to wonderful discoveries and sometimes to horrible messes. This one was a wonderful discovery that, for some reason, I never repeated again. I have always loved this piece; to me it has a feeling of extreme optimism and looks like a figure tossing something up to the sun.
So what are your artistic roots?
