New ink and pastel image done: You're Watching?

I've been busy organizing my website and learning some new HTML skills the past few weeks. Normally, I would like to post on my blog more frequently.

New cat drawing: You're Watching?

You're Watching? by Heidi Bada

So this drawing was done with some self-imposed pressure. Also I was a little unhappy with recent efforts at drawing the image in my head of a cat being interrupted while cleaning its paw.

Here it is, in pastel and ink. I think this time I captured the eye properly, to show that she is perturbed while being watched.

Prints will be available soon from my FineArtAmerica and Society6 galleries. Of course, this original is for sale too!

Website Project

Now the other thing I've been working on, the standalone website, started out as a venue to show off my HTML skills. However, it quickly became a goal for me to show off my illustrations in a comic book format. Then it was not so much comics necessarily, but just any storytelling goal using a website and modern HTML and companion tools.

I'm now taking a different direction with my website project, studying successful websites and figuring out what makes a good story in websites. I don't have anything up and running on my website to share yet, but rest assured this blog will be plastered with it when I've got at least a few illustrations in place.

My goal is to use ordinary webspace to demonstrate illustration as a storytelling tool, in both animated and static forms. Could be for entertainment, but more likely advertising and product demonstration. I love working with video as well, so the trio of illustration, animation, and video combined in a webspace creates a fun environment for me to work in. I'll want to create the images and the interaction/animation functions for custom projects, ideally.

It turned out that self-directed comic book sharing on comic book sites is a difficult way to get noticed and get feedback I need, regarding engagement of viewers and the qualities of my characters and storylines.

Using a website of my own, I can at least share my work, get more HTML experience, and get direct feedback from friends and fans.

My animation style was originally inspired by some Madefire comics I found using my iPad in the app store. I like how animation is minimal, and simply enhances the storyline (usually).

There you have it: a commercial application of illustration that is quite exciting and delightfully unpredictable as technology changes. Sounds good to me.

I survived creating a nearly-free web site this evening

The process took an hour or so. I was surprised it worked; I gave up on using godaddy.com a long time ago because their system seemed quite complex for the website I wanted to create.

I found freehostia.com which offers a free web hosting account. It truly is free. My website is working.

But...

It requires a domain name be registered, or an existing domain name typed in which will be forwarded. I didn't know what to do but I was sure there were cheaper ways to get a domain name. Freehostia is cheap, around $10 for a .com or other domain suffixes, but I wanted something cheaper!

To go along with Freehostia's web site hosting, I went straight to whois.com where I've registered domains before. I chose a domain name which was going to be suitable but discardable in future. I simply don't know what I want to call my "business" and I don't know exactly what type of service it will be, so I chose patiostudioproductions, which is very indicative of how I spend my days.

The suffix .biz was on sale, so I purchased patiostudioproductions.biz for $5 or so, and paid using paypal. I won five bucks a long time ago, and apparently it was still sitting in my paypal account.

I put in a partial name and address, so my real info wouldn't be visible whenever some joker looks up who owns the domain. I didn't want to have to pay extra for privacy. To have my name and address hidden, the cost per year is double what I paid for the domain! I don't approve of that practice.

There was a bit of setup required. You have to log into the whois.com (or wherever you bought the domain) domain centre and change some DNS settings to match the website host. You log into the domain centre on the website host as well...

To make a long story short, I just opened a desperate help chat window at the whois.com website and they typed enough instructions that made the whole problem disappear.

It worked. Like, right away! Within minutes I could type my new website address into Safari and it appeared! I had created a simple home.html file that said "Welcome" and so on, and it actually showed up all of a sudden. Those DNS settings are important. I'm glad the process worked; it seems my cutting and pasting of settings moved the right details into the right text boxes.

So there you go, I have a domain name and web host to practice and show off my HTML5 and CSS skills I learned earlier this summer. Who knows, maybe I'll become a producer of some...productions...! They will be artistic no doubt, and likely involving web design and video too.

New watercolour sketch in my portfolio

Check it out - click the Portfolio tab in the menu. It's a watercolour sketch of a cat sleeping. Here's a sample. It looks better on my portfolio page.

Watercolour sketch by Heidi Bada

My skills are now for sale on Fiverr, for sketching and painting on demand!

My latest ad on Fiverr is for freelance sketching and painting website illustrations. I'm trusting that people will search for "illustration" and "website" - and hopefully mine will be one of the ads that comes up. My sample is below:

My sketching and painting skills are available on Fiverr.com

I'm also found on Fine Art America and Society6 websites so far, but those sites are not oriented to making custom work as much as print or merchandise sales.

Last time I created illustrations for pay, I was discovered in Craigslist...boy, those were the days!

PanPastel painting of luxuriously happy cat

I finished a pastel painting of a cat ignoring life around him, and enjoying a quick fix. When you watch it (hosted on YouTube), the video plays in landscape orientation.

Portfolio has a new addition

You can see it on my Portfolio page on this blog. Pages (only one besides the blog) are in a menu under the header photo.

I added a new drawing. As I've created new images, I try to remember to upload them everywhere. My drawing category is building up now, with three images. At the moment, one is an oil pastel (the mountain biker), one is a pastel sketch (with both dry and wet techniques), and the third is today's addition - the cat Tiggie in PanPastel.

Check out the photos category while you're there. You'll see I typically like a bright and rich look, accomplished with something called "bloom" effect.

Another of my favourite photo techniques is to make blends. For example, a blend of several portraits of a person at work and/or play, letting some aspects of each image show through, which produces definitely non-traditional look. I also like to blend photos with illustrative layers, although my images of that are not really high-enough resolution for the portfolio. I'm working on learning to fix that using Photoshop and perhaps re-doing some of my favourite blends from the past.

It's all a work in progress!

How to finish this off? Another cat pastel nearing completion

This one is made using pan pastels. I like the current unpainted state of the foreground objects.

Frisky Tail nearly completed

The whole point of this picture was to convey a typical reward that a cat looks forward to, being pat on the head.

But as I finished some of the background details, I noticed a bit of a social theme emerging. There's a mouse right in front of the cat. The sun is shining. The trees are lively and full of energy.

The cat unfortunately, like many people, is ignoring the world at his footsteps in favor of a quick fix. It's easy to look cute and get a pat on the head! It takes energy to enjoy active and cognitive pursuits.

In any case, the foreground objects will probably be completed with a bright color scheme to draw attention to them.

Let me know if you like it! The finished work will show up at my Society6 and FineArtAmerica shops, and my portfolio too.

Cheers,

Heidi