Archive for March, 2009

Open Mic Sketch #2

An “artist date” is one of the tools I incorporated into my creative process after reading The Artist’s Way, probably the definitive creative process how-to book. The Artist’s Way is worth it’s own post another time, suffice to say it recommends the artist date as a weekly (if only…) discipline. Artist date criteria:

1. Spend a minimum of two hours
2. Do something you actually enjoy and want to do
3. It must be disconnected from any of your normal obligations

On Thursday I walked into downtown Ferndale for open mic night at AJ’s Cafe. Sometimes drawing is too stressful to count as an artist date for me — it feels too tied to work. But on this night I really felt like drawing, and the 1/2 mile or so walk into downtown was lovely in the crisp final throes of winter.

Most of the sketches really weren’t good enough to show, but that’s not the point of an artist date anyway. This one turned out pretty well. The guy was a perfect subject — he barely moved once he started playing.

Original design

Redesign

I finished Amy’s new photography showcase site a couple weeks ago. I first designed her site several years ago when she was just starting her photography business. Notable changes are the complete front-end redesign and a new wedding photography section. The photos are bigger to increase their impact, and I added a client login for online proofs. I also made some major upgrades to the flash backend. The new site will be much easier to update and expand when needed, saving myself time and Amy money.

And I got a call yesterday that a prospective client of mine found Amy’s site through my portfolio page and was planning to hire her for a family photo shoot. Amy’s photography doesn’t need much jazzing up to be impressive, but it’s nice to know her site’s doing its job.