My Depictions

Vintage Narrowboat Style Canal Art Watering Can and Pan

2010-04-09T19:32:00.003+01:00

Here's a vinatge 1 and a half gallon watering can, a little battered, that I have decorated canal folk art style. I painted this freehand and let the design evolve as I was going along. There was an almost round dent on the top which I couldn't resist painting a red rose into. The watering can lost it's sprinkler attachment a long time ago, but can still be used as a watering can.

Similarly, here's a vintage frying pan I've painted narrowboat style to be hung as a wall decoration.

I've left the wooden handle unpainted and in it's original state. I would rather maintain the original character of these vintage items, as they tell a story of past use. I'm not sure if other's would agree, but I think they have some rustic charm and a kind of shabby-chic-ness.

You can see more pictures or even buy them at Depictions Etsy Store where I have experimentally put them up for sale!

Ada Lovelace Day: In Honour of Chic Geeks Everywhere

2010-03-24T15:19:00.002Z

Happy Ada Lovelace day! March 24th is Ada Lovelace Day where anyone, anywhere, any gender, is encouraged to blog about a woman in technology or science:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do.

If you are not sure who Ada Lovelace was you can find out more on Finding Ada.

I would like to pay tribute to Jennifer Kyrnin, the About.com site's guide to web design. Jennifer has been helping people to learn HTML, CSS and XML since 1997. (This is way before I had access to the internet!)

I came across Jennifer's site when I first started learning HTML myself in 2005. Back then, I found many resources on the web for learning HTML/CSS were often too technical, or very dull, or out of date. If it weren't for Jennifer's articles and lessons, I probably wouldn't have continued to learn.

Looking back, I have learnt a lot since those early days. I still find Jennifer's resources and guidance useful. Not least, beacause they include current topics and are well written, in plain simple English.

As a second contribution, I would like to re-draw attention to the BBC News You Choose Google gadget, developed by myself. Among other things, the gadget can be set up to allow you to keep up to date with current technology news from the BBC.

About Web Deisgn

Search the blogsphere for Finding Ada

Retro TV Clock Google Gadget

2010-01-23T08:20:00.041Z

This new clock gadget looks very similiar to a BBC TV clock that used to be seen on British TV in the 1980s. I wanted to have a go at designing a clock Google gadget, and was inspired by some of the flash remakes the BBC commissioned themselves.

I had to jump through a few hoops to make this! I'm not going to get technical here, just show you how I put it together graphically. I didn't have the resources to make my own flash clock, so opted to make use of this free flash analogue clock widget and design my own skin for use in the Google gadget. (I could have chosen a javascript clock, but the flash-based clock looked a bit smarter.) The main ingredients were the flash clock widget, the Google gagdets api, and some graphics I created in photoshop. That's along with some regular "today's day and date" javascript, a little HTML and CSS.

To work with the clock widget the skin had to be a square graphic containing the clock face. TV's are not normally square, they are rectangle. I had hoped to use a background image of a TV frame into which I would "seamlessly blend" the square clock widget.

However, there were a couple of problems when it came to simulating the 1980's BBC1 TV clock. I found the second hand was too long, and could not be shortened by editing the clock widget code. Secondly, the centre of the clock didn't quite look much like the old TV clock.

The solution? Not very elegant, I forced the second hand shorter and achieved the clock centre by creating a transparent TV frame image I "placed over" the clock widget. A bit of a rough and ready way to create this gadget, but seems to work!

See it in action / add to a website. For more info on adding gadgets to Blogger, Google desktop, myAOl and other places check out my Gadget FAQ and tips.

The URL for adding this gadget:

http://widgetweb.co.uk/gadgets/date-time.xml

Reference Images, Stock Photos & A Fat Goose

2009-12-23T11:42:00.019Z

"The Goose is Getting Fat". This Xmas mixed media acrylic on wood painting is a typical case where I needed artist reference photos.

A while ago now, I started a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) to search sites for free reference images, free stock photos and free to use images for artists and designers. Unfortunately, I have not had a lot of time to put into this project. However, I have made use of the custom search engine, and although it is far from perfect, it has at times proved useful.

You can use the search engine on the Find free Reference Images page on my website or visit the Free Reference Images CSE homepage.

Red Rose Canvas Art

2009-12-17T11:02:00.017Z

One interesting thing about "painting to order" or being an "artist for hire" is the variety of artwork you may get asked to produce. If you have read my about the artist Naj page you'll know I do not place limitations on my subjects or style.

It's not that often I get asked to produce a large canvas painting. And, it's not that often I get asked to produce a contemporary flower art painting. This art commission came about through a much smaller contemporary red rose acrylic painting I had listed in Depictions Etsy store. Basically, the brief was to produce a similar style painting on a large square canvas. I used a ready-made 80cm x 80cm deep-edge linen canvas for this painting. Here's how I went about it..

First of all, I sketched out the rose design in white charcoal onto the canvas. I do mostly prefer a natural color canvas over white, because a white ground seems to make acrylic paint colors harsh and too bright. White charcoal is something I only recently discovered when my local art store had run out of white pastels! It's great for sketching out like this.

Next, I applied pieces of torn tissue paper using PVA glue to build a paper-mache texture defining the rose petals.

Lastly, having prepared the canvas, I painted the the rose in acrylics - absolutely no black paint. I will not use black at all when painting in acrylics because it dulls/mutes colors and flattens the tones. To finish, I sprayed the canvas with a gloss acrylic varnish to enhance the richness of color.

While I've been Gone...

2009-12-09T12:36:00.013Z

While I've been gone, I've been busy building websites, painting and building Google gadgets. I have also finally got around to re-vamping the appearance of my blog. Hope you like the new look!

I've built a simple site for someone selling motorhomes (RVs) - the site is out of my hands now but you can view it here: http://www.lhdmotorhomes.co.uk. The user group is mainly over 50 years of age, so navigation, readability and design had to be clear. Given the age group, and the nature of the site, I included a print style sheet and links to print pages. (I've found a lot of people from this age group like to print stuff out to read.) I built the site from scratch, i.e. hand-coded it, and did the graphics myself. I had great fun designing the 404 (page not found) page as you can see here.

The second site I've built from scratch, and also written, is for my Google gadgets. My author page in the iGoogle directory has not been updated for some time now. This, and other glitches with the directory, meant people couldn't find all my gadgets. You can now find all my gadgets at widgetweb.co.uk.

Gadget wise, I have recently been playing around with content from the BBC - they let you use some of their stuff to build your own stuff, providing you meet certain terms and conditions. Check out my featured gadget.

Art wise, I'm currently working on some canal art items and have had a couple of commissions for large paintings. More on that later, here's a little red watering can I recently painted.

The Worst Websites

2009-08-18T09:47:00.016+01:00

I sometimes struggle with some of the design aspects of building a website. However, in times of despair, I cheer myself up by looking at examples of the worst web design. It is a comfort to know my efforts are nowhere near as bad!

This badwebs example has been around for a while now, but it still sums up some of the worst annoyances.

The worst website shows how annoying pop-ups can be. It is a bit of a prank and will temporarily disable your browser! (If you really can't bear to click your way through the countless pop ups, you will need to start windows task manager to shut down the browser.) However, the alert bomb will only happen once in 24hrs, so if you revisit the site on the same day - no pop-ups Phew!

I also find Vincent Flanders site a highly entertaining way of learning good design from observing the bad. (So good in fact, I've included a link on my web design resources page.) This Havenworks one from his 2008 selection is just so unbelievably bad!

Paul Gauguin Art

2009-05-16T10:55:00.007+01:00

The artist Paul Gauguin was in the news earlier this month. Apparently it was Gauguin who cut off Van Gogh's ear, or so a recently published book claims.

The book, titled In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, is the product of 10 years of research by German academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans.
Source: Gauguin Cut off Van Gogh's Ear - BBC News

What is interesting about this book is that it is based on the original police investigation of the time.

I've always admired the works of Paul Gauguin and built myself a gadget to familiarize/inspire myself with his paintings. The gadget is now published and features more than 200 paintings, to add to Google click here:

Handwritten Notes to Enhance Site

2009-05-08T09:52:00.011+01:00

I have hopefully enhanced my artist site, albeit in a very small way by adding some handwritten notes in graphics form (i.e. these are images of text). I did this in response to a couple of navigational issues I spotted when I witnessed a first time visitor (who is not a big internet user) trying to use my site. One issue was the main navigation wasn't easy to for them to spot, and the other, it wasn't immediately obvious to click on an image to enlarge it. That said, we are talking about someone quickly scanning a web page, but isn't that what we all do most of the time? When I have the time, I shall probably re-design the navigation, but for now I have opted for adding "notes" to highlight navigation, and to draw attention to the phrase "Click here to view image larger". You can check out examples of this on my Portrait Gallery/Art Commissions page

Generally, I would NOT recommend using graphics in place of text because search engines cannot read the text in images. As Google put it:

Don't use images to display important names, content, or links. Our crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics. Use ALT attributes if the main content and keywords on your page can't be formatted in regular HTML.
Source: Google-Friendly sites - Webmasters/Site Owners Help: Things to Avoid

In my case I have used the graphics very sparingly, and not for important written content. If you're interested in hand-written/hand-drawn web design styles, there's a great article on Smashing Magazine: Hand-Drawn Style In Modern Web Design.

Featured Gadget Feature

2009-04-24T08:08:00.009+01:00

I have a new hobby, learning to make iGoogle gadgets. Gadgets are not just for your personalized iGoogle page (you have one if you have a Google Account), they can also be added to websites, Blogger, Myspace and Ning to name a few.

To introduce readers to recent efforts, I have added a link to the top of blog posts. What I really like is that they are quite small coding projects, so satisfying to make. I also thought this might be an "off the wall" way to promote my website/art. For example, I have a link to my website site shown in my iGoogle directory listing (screenshot shown below). I wouldn't have gotten into all this if it weren't for Seoish - so a big thank you there.

Brown Hare Easter Spring Art

2009-04-08T10:59:00.008+01:00

Here's a square format acrylic painting on canvas of a brown hare I currently have on show in the Wayland Spring Art Exhibition

The painting is titled "Brown Hare on Verdé ", verdé being that beautiful greeny colour bronze may turn with age. It's a strange painting really, and I don't know if it works.

The verdé background was the result of experimenting to see if I could re-create verdé on canvas - that in itself worked quite well (so well I am tempted to produce some simple verdé decorative "abstract" canvases). The square format of the canvas encouraged me toward a "graphic design" approach to the work. I am interested in brown hares, not only because it is spring, but also because they have been linked to pagan fertility rites and the rebirth of spring. Old bronze and old rites, strange symbols - the swirly imprints I've applied, all sound like they could be good together. Perhaps the hare is too realistic looking, or the composition is poor, would like to hear what others think.

Link Checking - How to Take the Click Work Out of It

2009-03-16T08:51:00.009Z

I recently added fellow artist Vicky Mycock's new website to my Great Artist and Craft Sites page. Now there are quite a few links on that web page, and I wanted to quickly check they were all okay. So, I ran the page through the W3C Link Checker. It's quite simple to do - you just enter the URL (web address) of the page you want checking on the form and press check. After a few seconds of processing, you get the results.

Below you will see a screenshot of some of my results:

This is not as complicated as it looks. Reading from top to bottom:

Line 31 - I have purposely excluded this page from search engines using robots.txt, so I will need to check it manually, i.e. by clicking the link itself.
Line 153 - this result refers to the google analytics code I have on the page, not my code, so no action required.
Line 87 - this is what a broken link may look like in the results. This website is no longer, so I will remove the link.

The W3c state that:

For reliable link checking results, check HTML validity first. See also CSS validity.

And there you have it. A simple automated way to check your links using a free resource without having to visit each site/web page manually.

Portrait Art

2009-02-23T09:25:00.005Z

Here's a preiview of one of the facial portraits you can view on the new portrait art page on MyDepictions website. The portraits featured span across the generations, and are all pastel portraits of people.

Did you know good quality artist's pastels are a fully archival artists medium? The surface or paper used and standard of framing off course matter when it comes to longevity, but it seems a common misconception that oils are "the only archival" medium.

Fairy Bunny Rabbit Fantasy Art ACEO Art Card

2009-02-20T15:16:00.010Z

Here's a little baby fairy bunny miniature fantasy painting. You can buy this ACEO art card from my recently opened etsy store: Depictions, which I hope to be stocking up with more ACEOs soon!

Woodland Snow Painting

2009-02-07T14:41:00.008Z

Snow is all we seem to have had this week here in the UK. This snow painting is my depiction of a barren winter woodland scene. It is not an existing view, but rather composed from some sketches/photos I made of a chestnut tree winter woodland.

The wood itself was eerily quiet and devoid of life when the snow was down, yet there was some evidence of life - there were footprints in the snow along the path.

This original acrylic on canvas painting is currently available for purchase in my newly opened Etsy store Depictions.

Re-Creating Art

2009-01-12T07:43:00.011Z

I recently exhibited this graphite drawing re-creation of "Virgin and Child" by Von Carolsfeld in a Christmas Art exhibition. I was interested in the design and simple style of the original artwork. I also wanted to try and re-create the ambiance of this 1850's religious painting, more so than to produce a replica.

This is not the first such re-creation I have done. Co-incidentally, I also did a little recreation from DaVinci's The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist. I think I'm just attracted to "old world" mother and child subjects. I knew very little about the original artist when I started this work, but I now know he was a German painter, renowned for his biblical illustrations.

Recreating art works can be an interesting way of finding out about past artists as well as pushing your own styles and techniques in different directions.

My new Art Exhibitions page.

New Look Artist Website

2008-12-17T12:42:00.005Z

I have finally settled on a new look for my artist website. I have been playing around with the design for some time, and did have an updated version quietly launched a few months ago. It really is quite awkward to get a fluid design to look good - probably why a lot of professional designers seem to choose fixed width designs.

Deciding how to best show images of my artwork was a real bugbear. However, after searching around, I found this fabulous script called slideshow2! on Google Code, and have used that for presenting images on the gallery pages. I have not played around with the existing written content too much, but I have added some new pages and re-organised the resources pages. New pages include:

Feedback or comments are off course welcome!

Testing Times

2008-05-06T13:45:00.015+01:00

Back from a short break and onwards with the business of developing my website. I have finally tamed the CSS code I have written for the new "tableless layout" of my website and am currently testing pages. One thing I always seem to struggle with is the simple choice of color-scheme! I know it shouldn't happen to an artist, but choosing colors for web page design is something I could spend hours deliberating over, together with fonts. I humbly accept that there is most certainly a skill to web graphics. (I will at some future point publish some tips for choosing web page colors.)

Working on moving the existing website to the new design, has not been unlike being handed a blank canvas. Indeed, there is so much more that can be achieved with the layout, design and the order of content. I have found myself spending a fair amount of time learning to use Photoshop, as well as familiarizing myself with CSS coding. Having opted for a "liquid" style design (i.e. one that resizes with the browser window), I have also had to get calculations right. So I would be lying if I said it hasn't been a steep learning curve.

As I said in my previous post, I would not be going live with the new design until it looked good in all the major browsers. I also mentioned that there are problems with the way some browsers, and namely, Internet Explorer display CSS based designs. I have a new found fondness for IE (not)! One problem for me is that I do not have Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) or IE8 on the PC I use (to upgrade from IE6, I would have to install some updates that would conflict with other software I regularly use.) I have found myself writing the code for Mozilla Firefox browser first, then carrying out amendments for Internet Explorer. I have downloaded windows versions of Opera and Safari to see what the new design looks like in these browsers. I also came across a helpful piece of free software called IE tester, which enables you to see how your webpage looks in the previous & your own current version of IE. There is also an excellent free open source project which allows you to test your web design in many different browsers at Browsershots, although you will have to wait a little for results.

TBH I am now mostly resorting to accessing friends PC's to check my design in IE7! So be warned, if you move your site to a CSS based design, you must carry out some browser-testing to check the site is looking as you want it, or at worst is legible. If you check out this test page using IE 7, you probably wont see any of the images on the right-hand side, and the text accompanying the images may be illegible. Now I do have a fix in mind for this, but it does serve to demonstrate how important content may be lost to the viewer if a web page isn't tested in different major browsers. The test page itself bans search engines from indexing - a necessary precaution I will also post about at a later date. In the meantime, I will welcome constructive criticism of the new look design which can be seen on the test page, if anyone wishes to comment!

CSS browser testing browser compatibility browser bugs

Garden of Inspiration

2008-03-10T10:02:00.008Z

One project I am currently working on, as and when, is redesigning my artist website (www.mydepictions.co.uk) and moving it to a CSS (cascading style sheets) based design. The current site was built using HTML and uses tables for the page layout. I quite like this approach and I actually enjoy working with tables, but they are somewhat old-fashioned nowadays in terms of web-standards, and take longer to load in the browser window. So, I am on a mission to produce a "tableless" layout for my website using CSS with XHTML, and, as with the current site, it will be hand-coded.

I will be keeping my code clean and error-free by making regular use of the extremely handy W3validator, and also (with more user-friendly coments) the Wedesign Group CSS Ceck up. (Both of these allow you to upload your page for checking from the PC, so no need to have live pages on the web in order to check.) While valid code isn't essential in website design, I feel it is best to have valid clean-code unless you absolutely know and understand what you are doing. Some errors may have serious consequences in terms of your website being crawled and indexed properly.

One of the bug-bears with style sheets is the way different browsers display the page. A decent website should look good in all the major browsers. This is much more of a challenge with CSS and CSS is generally more demanding technically, so I would definitely recommend gaining a firm knowledge of HTML before learning CSS. Browser statistics currently show a large proportion of internet users still using Internet Explorer 6, 21% (and rising) using Internet Explorer 7, and 37% (also rising) using my favourite Firefox. Perhaps we can look forward to a day when most of the world will be using Firefox! In the meantime, I will not be going live with the new design until I am convinced it looks good in all the top browsers. Its a shame this cannot be said of some commercial sites, I have noticed one or two that are not rendered correctly in Internet Explorer 6.

On my journey of learning CSS I keep visiting the Zen Garden for inspiration..and to see how others have gone about style sheets. Web design is my hobby, not my profession so I do not expect to reach these standards! Just look what some of these guys have accomplished using CSS in the Zen Garden Design List..the HTML is the same in all cases!

Related posts: Building an artist Website

Mydepictions Web Design Resources Page

Another handy validator:Total Validator..you can have a desktop version of this, and there is a Firefox extension which gives you a one-click validator icon.

"artist website" Markup Validation CSS

The End of Small Art Sellers on eBay?

2008-02-02T14:05:00.000Z

Personally, I have not been listing much on ebay of late, as I've been concentrating on producing artwork I hope to exhibit. The general announcement on the 29th January details some big changes, not just fee changes. Similar changes are being applied to other worldwide ebay sites, including ebay.com, often used by UK artists to reach a wider audience.

The announcement has sent shockwaves through the community, with some sellers considering boycotting the site. And, I'm not so sure I will be listing much on the site in future. (For those who don't already know, I sell small format promotional artwork, maybe listing three or four low-cost items a week, when I'm active.) Check out the overview..the planned changes stand to benefit the high-volume business/power-sellers. Ebay express..probably the right place for high-volume business type sellers is closing. But what about the small casual sellers? We have contributed to and made the site what it is today. The idea of cutting the cost of listing items and then charging more if and when an item sells is welcome in principle. Also the removal of fee's on ebay.com for a basic picture/gallery listing is probably long overdue. Why haven't they implemented it on ebay UK? Then there's "Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers." What?! From May, I cannot leave a negative feedback if I have a poor buyer experience, madness. There are also visibility issues..high selling good feedback sellers will be rewarded with greater visibility. I have and hope to maintain 100% positive feedback, but I cannot compete on volume of sales. I wont ramble on much more, there's some good existing articles below:

Ebay Announce UK Fee Changes
eBay Sellers Protest, Threaten Strike

ebay fees ebay uk ebay boycott

Naj Art in Exhibition

2008-01-29T11:28:00.000Z

(Click Image to read details.)

The Independent Artist's Group art exhibition kicks off Tuesday February 5th, 2008, at The Floor One Gallery in Rugby Art Gallery and Museum. It features the work of fifteen international artists from the IAG group, a UK based group that was originally formed through a common interest in selling art via eBay. As an artist who mostly paints to commission, it's not often I exhibit, so this is a rare opportunity to see some of my artwork in a gallery setting.

If you can't make it to Rugby, here's a preview of the works I will be exhibiting....

"The Owl & The Pussy Cat: Hand in Hand at the Edge of the Sand", size: 10" x 8", an original mixed media illustration based on the children's nonsense poem by Edward Lear.

"Path in The Bluebell Wood", size: 12" x 10", an impasto, impressionistic oil pastel painting on canvas board.

"Sukey Watching Butterflies", size 10" x 8", a mixed media (crayon and gouache) painting on illustrating board....something of a cliche and maybe a little kitsch, but it serves to demonstrate portrait painting!

A big thank you to IAG member Andrew Douse, who has put a lot of hard work into orgainsing this exhibition.

The Independent Artist's Group Blog

The Independent Artist's Group website

Independent Artists Group Exhibition - Ken Gillam's Blog

Pictures from the IAG Exhibition

Temporary Exhibitions at Floor One Gallery

Edward Lear Bluebell Wood Cat Portrait Art Art Exhibition

Informal Cat Portrait Paintings

2008-01-16T10:25:00.001Z

Here's two more in a series of informal style cat portrait commissions I've recently been working on. These are small format, mixed media works with crayons (i.e. colored pencils), ink and gouache. Cats can be fascinating subjects to paint and draw, especially as there is such variation in their coloring and fur.

I am currently busy preparing work for exhibition. As I mainly work to commission, I rarely own work to exhibit. However, this year I hope to change that and exhibit at least once! More about that later.

Portait Gallery and Commissions

All Cat Art Posts

cat paintings cat art cat portraits

Snowboarding Santa Featured on TalentDatabase!

2007-12-20T16:45:00.000Z

My depiction of Snowboarding Santa has just been chosen to be featured as a header on the TalentDatabase.com Sports Channel! Members were invited to submit their holiday themed art to be featured at the top header of each Talent Channel. I had hoped to have this Santa illustration finished in time for print sales, but I didn't manage it due to a winter bug. So, I'm pleased this image has found a use this Christmas. TalentDatabase is a great networking site if you have artistic or other talent. I'd like to say a big thank you to them for choosing to feature my art! Check out Snowboarding Santa on the Sports Channel.

You can see the full size original image on Redbubble.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Westie Meets Robin in the Snow & Online Art Galleries

2007-12-13T11:20:00.000Z

I've recently uploaded this seasonal gouache painting of a Westie (Westhighland Terrier) with a robin to my Imagekind gallery, NajART, where you can purchase it as a print. I've also had a go at making a T-shirt design which can be purchased from Depictions gallery at RedBubble. The border shows some of the quick effects you can apply by using Frame Mask from the drop down edit menu on Faststone Image viewer.

If you want to add your art to one of the many online galleries on the net, you will find that they often have different and varying requirements for the resolution and size of the images you submit. In fact the variations in requirements between the different sites can be quite frustrating. The easiest and quickest way I have found to prepare images for such sites is to use the free open source Faststone Image Viewer software I have mentioned before in movie maker posts. You can very efficiently set the image size, print output size and dpi. Simply select your image and go to Edit>Resize/Resample where you will be able set the various options. You can also save your work in various file formats e.g. TIFF, PNG, JPEG, GIF etc. If you are interested in online galleries, there's some interesting articles on emptyeasel.com: comparison chart and comparing features, traffic, pricing and more, for example.

I wouldn't have high expectations of selling art directly from just listing(s) on these online gallery sites. In many cases there are 1000's of images of artwork for buyers to browse. Some sites seem to make inflated claims about their search engine visibility - they may not be any more visible than your own web site, if you've got that well-optimized. If you are serious about selling, apart from good artwork, you need to have your listing(s) optimized by good tagging, titles and descriptions. You also probably need to use your website or blog and social networking platforms to promote your listing(s). This is one reason why I choose not to pay for online gallery services. (Ebay fees I can stomach - with the traffic eBay get, you can more or less be assured potential buyers will browse your work!) There is no harm, though, in "putting yourself about a bit" and joining some online galleries. It's one way of promoting your art to a wider audience, even better if you can place links to your website/blog, and you may even get the odd sale or commission.

westie

Designs on Signs - Hand Painted Signwriting

2007-11-30T12:30:00.000Z

Here's a recent example of a sign-writing commission. This sign is for a new beauty therapy business Beauty Spot, in the Norfolk town of Dereham. The sign is on a (recycled) piece of solid oak. It is all hand-painted, not a stencil in sight! I don't market myself as a sign-writer, but I do accept occasional commissions for signs. This type of work mostly comes about either through recomendation, or if people have found about my canal art work.

The brief for this project was quite simply to make an exterior sign to a certain size, to incorporate lilac, the business name and phone number. The construction, design, layout, colour combinations and lettering style were up to me!

Signs have a utilitarian purpose, and must be legible. There is a little bit more involved in designing a sign than just painting some neatly set out lettering, though. For example, the style of lettering, graphic layout and colour scheme, should be appropriate. The materials used should be fit for the purpose - you dont want a sign with paintwork that blisters or quickly fades/peels, or a sign that warps.

The sign should convey the important information clearly and logically. With this sign, I opted for a lilac background colour. I chose to do the business title in a clear, "soft feminine" italic style of lettering. I used a narrow, contrasting black shaddow around the white lettering to make the business name stand out against the lilac background, giving an embossed effect over distance. I chose to do the phone number a simple strong black, bold sans serif lettering. To add balance and interest to the design, I added a white "scrollwork" filler/divider, underlining the business name. I did not give this the same "embossed effect" to "match" the white lettering. This content was much less important than the business name and phone number, so I wanted it to fall back to the background. In designing the sign, I tried to ensure the sign could be read clearly from as greater distance as possible, especially given there was a size limitation. I intentionally included a full-stop, as a play on the words "Beauty Spot".

Whenever I do work like this, I start taking more notice of all the signs I see about me in the built environment. One "professional" roadside hung vinyl sign I recently noticed was filled with vast amounts of information, more like a business leaflet than a sign. To read any of the information on the sign, you would have to be stood right below the sign. There was poor graphic layout with blocks of text spaced out at untidy intervals. There are some fantastic modern vinyl signs about. But there are also some appalling ones! I wonder if, in some cases, people have bought the software and equipment, so therefore are "sign-writers". A bit like "I have just bought Dreamweaver therefore I'm a web designer syndrome". Perhaps they are victims of clients demands, but a true professional sign-writer would not oblige with such poor graphics and excessive content. I am not a professionally-trained sign-writer, and I know I would not.

Check out this fabulous collection of photos of traditional hand-painted signage from the Flickr group Signpaintr, which I found via a post on the fascinating NoRelavance.com blog.

sign-writing hand-painted signs