My Depictions

Net Neutrality: an Issue for Us All

2014-09-10T15:04:00.000+01:00

What is Net Neutrality?

Net neutrality is the principle of an open internet with free speech.

Net Neutrality is the Internet's guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. This is the definition of an open Internet.
— www.savetheinternet.com: net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

An open internet is exactly what Sir Tim Berners-Lee intended when he gave the internet to the people for free. It could have been a very different story - imagine an internet that was owned and operated, for example, by Apple, or Orange, say.

Net Neutrality Under Threat

Now internet use is mainstream in developed countries, the net is increasingly under threat from large multi-national corporations, conglomorates, spy angencies and governments who want to control or censor what information you can access.

Sir Tim says that the web is so important it needs its own Magna Carta, with the freedom to use it as important as enshrined human rights.
— BBC News - Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Web needs its own Magna Carta

Net neutrality is currently under threat in the US. If you have content on the world wide web, this affects you too. If you are not a US citizen, you can still participate in letting US law makers know your views. International outrage can help drive the message home. Do not hold back if you are from outside the US, join the Battle for Net Neutrality and sign the Protect Global Internet Freedom statement now.

Learn More About an Open Internet

Read Why net neutrality should matter to everyone. Also see A Guide to the Open Internet.

Make Sure it's not Gameover for your Windows Computers

2014-06-06T18:54:00.003+01:00

Detect / remove the Gameover Zeus Virus & Cryptolocker(For Free)

Have you scanned your computer yet for those associated nasties, CryptoLocker (renders your computer unusable until you pay a ransom) and Gameover Zeus Virus? There were news announcements throughout the media, and the UK government's Get Safe Online website actually crashed due to a sudden surge in demand. The UK National Crime Agency says it, and America's FBI have taken temporary control over the communications which the criminals are using to connect with infected computers. If you have not scanned your computer, you have a limited time in which you should do it. (If you have a Windows virtual machine set up on a Mac, or any server running Windows and Windows embedded, this applies to you too.) YOU SHOULD RUN A SCAN NOW, you should also make sure all your software is up to date, that you have back-ups of important files photos etc., and take care to avoid the virus in future too!

Example of the Cryptolocker Ransom Demand
as shown on getsafeonline.org

How do you get the Virus?

The malware may be downloaded as an email attachment. It could also be a phishing scam. So you should only open email attachments when you're absolutely certain the email is genuine, and try not to be duped into giving away personal details.

How to check for the malware?

If you are uncertain if your existing anti virus is up to date or doing it's job properly, download the free sophos virus removal tool. For other free tools and comprehensive information on this threat visit the UK Government site Get Safe Online.

To Pin or not to Pin? Pinterest and Netiquette.

2013-12-08T16:48:00.001+00:00

Pinterest, the pin-board style photo-sharing site, has divided opinion amongst artists and photographers, some welcome their work being pinned, whereas others most certainly do not. The latter are usually professionals concerned with copyright issues such as images being used without their permission or license, and their work not being properly credited.

Over the few years it's been going, Pinterest has become one of the top social networking sites, being something like the third or fourth most popular social network globally (see Alexa Top Global sites). So, as an artist publishing images of your work on the net, you do need to consider which side of the fence you sit on: to be pinned, or not be pinned?

Pinterest itself tries to encourage responsible pinning on their pinning etiquette page. Also, a search on Google for Pinterest dos and don'ts, will reveal this is a well documented subject, and I'm not about to re-invent the wheel! When done responsibly, I am quite happy for images from this blog to be pinned. (By responsibly, I mean credited with a link back to the original article.) Personally, I can see advantages in my work or my blog getting more exposure and a link back ← this is the responsible bit!

What if I don't want my images pinned?
No pin all images with optional message

Did you know you can insert some code into your webpages or blog that goes someway to prevent your images being pinned? The no pin meta tag allows you to prevent all images from being pinned via the Pin-it button. (Some may see this as kind of being the wrong way round - having to add a meta tag to opt out, rather than one to opt in.) The code should be added to the HTML head section of all your webpages with no-pin content, pasted between the <head> </head> tags (Surprisingly, these head tags are located at the top of the HTML code.)

This is the code:

And this is the code with an optional, very polite message saying "No pinning thank you!" intended for those trying to pin:

To add the no-pin meta tag to Blogger is easy

Go to Blogger Home > Template > Edit HTML
Next, paste the copied no-pin meta tag code on a line of its own, just before </head>
Then hit the save template button.

No pin an image

There is some code to exclude images on an image by image basis. You include nopin="nopin" in the HTML image tag like so:

Stop Images being pinned (Advanced)

If your site is hosted on an Apcahe server with mod-rewrite enabled, (usually paid for hosting and not Blogger) you can add rules to your .htaccess file. You could filter requests by the Pinterest user agent and rewrite those requests for images to an alternative image. Check out How to stop your images from being pinned by Ben Werdmuller for an idea.

Make it clear you do not want your images pinned

It may seem obvious, but you should make it clear to people that you do not want your images pinned. Images can be downloaded and then pinned later - the meta tag code will have no effect in those cases. So make sure you tell people on your website or blog, e.g. under terms, that you do not want images pinning.

Watermark your images

Watermark those precious images, so that the original website/creator source is visible. You could include a "no-pin" note within the watermark, if you're a no-pinner. (Again, I can see how some may think this is the wrong way round).

Pinterest and Third Party Websites

Some websites actively encourage the pinning of images you submit to them like Etsy.com and now Ebay.com. The answer here is simple, if you really do not want your images pinned, and there is no way to opt out, you will have to put up with it or choose to avoid such sites. As a "damage limitation" exercise, you could remove, or replace the image immediately after a sale. Etsy allows for editing of sold out listings, Ebay allows self-hosting of images too, for example, so you have a little control.

What's the best free antivirus?

2013-09-25T19:05:00.002+01:00

How can you tell if a free anti-virus is any good?

No anti-virus (AV) will be perfect and detect everything, so no individual product is better than the rest. I've never felt paid-for solutions are really necessary for ordinary home use. In fact, a lot of free AV programs are only intended for home users. Off course, if after trying, you want to upgrade to the paid-for version, then that's your choice. But don't doubt that there are some adequate free AV programs.

How much a free AV does or does not slow your system down, usually becomes apparent with use, as does the extent and methods of advertising, but, without downloading lots of infections and viruses (that's if you know where to find them!), how can you tell if an AV program is any good at it's principle job? And, how do you go about choosing one?

You could try asking friends and colleagues for their opinions and recommendations. Their technical knowledge, computer/internet usage, and computers will differ from yours, though. What's good for one operating system may not be so good for another, for example.

Looking on the net for recent reviews or posts comparing free AV software and checking out recommendations on favourite tech sites is another approach. Looking at the top ranking products for "free AV" on a popular download site such as CNET, and reading some reviews there, can help get a feel for how different programs integrate on people's systems, their best features and their user-friendlieness. But that's not telling you how good the AV is at detecting infections, repairing sytems, not reporting false positives etc. That's where the AV-comparitives organistaion comes in. AV-Comparitives perform "real world" style testing of AV programs and offer freely accessible results to all.

AV-Comparatives is an independent not-for-profit organization offering systematic testing that checks whether security software, such as PC/Mac-based antivirus products and mobile security solutions, lives up to its promises. Using one of the largest sample collections worldwide, it creates a real-world environment for truly accurate testing. AV-Comparatives offers freely accessible results to individuals, news organizations and scientific institutions.
— AV-Comparitives About Us

So to determine what's the best free AV for your situation, consider friends and collegues recomendations, read around, see what the most popular downloads are, and check out the reviews-reports on AV-Comparitives.org. Finally, if you find out a program doesn't suit you, don't be afraid of moving to another free AV. Just make sure you have thoroughly removed the old program before installing the new - check with the manufacturers website how to do this. Always remember to download from a site you know you can trust too!

My personal favorites? For Windows, at the time of writing, for real-time monitoring I like Avast or Bitdefender (you only want one of these types of AV on your machine or you will encounter problems!) I often have a copy of malwarebytes' anti-malware (for on demand scanning). There are also free, on-demand, online scanners: HouseCall by Trendmicro and Panda Activescan to name a couple. These provide a useful additional alternative if you believe your machine may be compromised and your installed AVs are not identifying the malware.

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~~ "dipper" (for scooping out grain) 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!

Retro TV Clock Google Gadget

2010-01-23T08:20:00.041+00:00

This 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 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 hacked 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!

Add this gadget to a website. For more info on adding gadgets to Blogger, 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

2009-12-23T11:42:00.019+00:00

"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 find free image search on this blog, please make sure you read the notes about free to use images. Thers's also the Free Reference Images CSE homepage.

Red Rose Canvas Art

2009-12-17T11:02:00.017+00:00

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...

2009-12-09T12:36:00.013+00:00

While I've been gone, I've been busy building websites, and building Google gadgets.

I've built a simple site for someone selling motorhomes (RVs) - the site is out of my hands now but you can view a working version of it here. The user group were most likely over 50 years of age. Therefore, in my mind, the navigation, readability and design had to be clear. I included a CSS print style sheet together with links to print pages. (From personal experience, I've found people may like to print "classified ad" type content out to read .)

Another important aspect to this website design was that the owners wanted to be able to edit the HTML themselves (i.e. in this case, add or remove information, without having to upgrade their current hosting plan to include PHP). The site's owners were quite html savvy, so I taught them how to amend their web pages and upload to their site. I used comment tags in the HTML source code to mark points for editing. This meant they could easily find where and how to update their site. I hand-coded the site and did the graphics myself. I had great fun designing the 404 (page not found) page as you can see.

The second site I've built from scratch, and also written the copy for, 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.

The Worst Websites

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

I sometimes struggle with some of the aesthetic 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.

See Gauguin Gadget

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 had 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

2009-03-16T08:51:00.009+00:00

Q. But why would I want to check for broken links?

A. Because some broken links can slow your website down, & broken links are a bad experience for visitors.

I recently added a fellow artist 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

2009-02-23T09:25:00.005+00:00

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

2009-02-20T15:16:00.010+00:00

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

2009-02-07T14:41:00.008+00:00

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

2009-01-12T07:43:00.011+00:00

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

2008-12-17T12:42:00.005+00:00

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

Err..hmm, this post was written in 2008. It's quite out of date now! Web technologies have moved on a lot, and so have I.

This post is quite sweet in that it documents the point at which I began learning and using CSS techniques...

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!

Garden of Inspiration

2008-03-10T10:02:00.008+00:00

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.

Naj Art in Exhibition

2008-01-29T11:28:00.000+00:00

(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.

Pictures from the IAG Exhibition

Informal Cat Portrait Paintings

2008-01-16T10:25:00.001+00:00

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

Snowboarding Santa Featured on TalentDatabase!

2007-12-20T16:45:00.000+00:00

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.

You can see the full size original image on Redbubble.