New website

[FireBeach]

:confused: New website

Hey everyone I finally created my first website. Some of the images that I have posted here are on the site and there are a few new ones. Let me know what you think. Remember I’m a sculptor not a graphic designer ;)

http://www.thebeachoffire.com

[JAZ]

Hi Kelly,
Congratualations on your online presence. I think simple websites are often better forums for artwork than the ones with all of the bells and whistles becasue you wan thte focus to be on the artworks. Yours is simple, which is good. It's easy to navigate too.
One smaee suggestion would be to put your lists of works in the same order that the photos are shown in. For example, "Untitled 3" is the last image in your sequence, but third or fourth from the top in the text list. The image is also sort of pixellated, so you did something different to that one. If it's because you are using a xerox or printed version of the image and scanning that one solution is to use the descreen function in Photoshop, if you have that program. If you descreen, then sharpen the image it would look better.
It's commendable that you took the plunge and did your site and congratulations on your new work.
JAZ

[fritchie]

Kelly - Congratulations on getting started with this. It's something I decided awhile back I wouldn't do, but many people sell quite a lot of work this way, and it certainly gets your name out.

By the way, when I checked just now, I couldn’t get any of your sculptural images. Maybe you’re changing them as JAZ suggested. I tried one print, and that did come up.

[FireBeach]

i just didnt like how that page looked. so i spent most of the day updateing it. less info about each piece is on there. but visiually i feel it flows better. i spent most of the evning up until right now uploading the page so that could explain the inability to get some images. let me know if it still doesnt work. thanks for checking it our.

[Julianna]

Hi, Kelly.

Congrats on the website. I love the overall concept, but like all creations, you may want to spend some time away from it and look at it again with fresh eyes. The linking to the individual pictures of your work is a bit awkward, and I'm trying to think of a better solution for that. You may also want to offer smaller (in kb) photos so they'll load more quickly. Even with broadband, some of the larger photos took a few seconds too long in this world of instant-gratification.

You might want to consider the date/time counter on the Home page. It slows the loading of the page, and doesn't have a whole lot to do with you or your artwork.

Julianna

[GaryR52]

Good job, Kelly! My only criticism is about the site's navigation. It's become a recent cliche to use what advocates of user-friendliness term "mystery meat" navigation and I see you've succumbed to that urge.

Hiding the site's content and the functions of the buttons only obfuscates and it has a tendency to drive away the less patient viewers. When you play hide-and-seek with your navigation buttons and content, you're going to aggravate at least some of the people who come to your site and creating a negative viewing experience for them doesn't help your purpose. Just my two cents.

Gary

[fritchie]

Kelly - I'm still not getting your site correctly. It loaded pretty slowly, and all I got was 4 very dark images, probably watercolors of some sort. When I clicked on each in turn, they led to paintings, drawings, or a bio. Nothing on sculpture. Possibly the whole site didn't load.

Keep trying on this! It looks like some people ae getting more than I am. Browsers differ in how they respond, and I'm using Netscape 7.1.