Removing the homepage

I have decided to remove my homepage, making the first page you see the Bio. I felt that right now the home page was an unnecessray addition, I didn't really know what to put on it.

Additional pages

I have decided to add two extra categories into the gallery tab- Sketchbook and Products. The sketchbook page will include images that are not regarded as final resolutions, smaller scale sketches and ideas that would be found within my sketchbook, I feel adding this category will create a finer definition between the work I would consider saleable and things I experiment with.
The products page may not stay on my site, I am just trying it out as I have experimented with using my imagery on clothing and accessories.

Although I do have photographs that I have taken of the Iphone cases I felt they were portrayed better in the product previews found on Vistaprint. 

Changing the format of the gallery pages

The Gallery pages are built up of categories which can be updated by adding posts, the problem with this was that each new image I posted had a date stamp of when I uploaded it. The other aesthetic issue I did not like was that you had to scroll down to see each image, I wanted all the images to be viewed at once allowing the viewer to enlarge individual images as they wish. 

Whilst in the Wordpress workshop I learnt how to add a gallery to a post, rather than an individual image. There were different formats to show the images; tiled mosaic, square tiled,slideshow, cirlces and thumbnail grid.

Tiled Mosaic                    Thumbnail Grid

Square Tile                            Circles    

Slideshow

I felt the squared tiled option was most appropriate in size and formality. If you hover over an image the title appears along with a caption, if you click on the image it enlarges to fill the screen with the caption beneath. I have decide to include the title, year created and medium within the caption. 

Artist Research

Lucy and Jorge Orta

Geoffrey Farmer

Farmer, like many artists dies not have his own personal website, instead he has multiple pages with the Catriona Jeffries Gallery site. A Van­cou­ver based gallery rec­og­nised inter­na­tion­aly for its ongo­ing, rigor­ous con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary art discourse. 

Rather than having a page on the website listing education and past exhibitions Farmer has a downloadable version of his CV. This format means that the document can include much more detail without bogging down a webpage. 

Claire Rachel Sage

Thomas Slater

 This website has a very basic design, with a brief blurb, logo and contact details to the left with a scroll facility to go through the artworks. 

Rebecca Kunzi 

Although I have looked at a few websites of established artists, I have primarily been looking into those of young, emerging artists who I aspire to be like. Many of the artists I have connections with - from studying at the same school, completing the same foundation course or actually knowing them. I thought this approach to research would make it more attainable, in that I am striving to work in the same art world as people I know and that are making it for themselves. 

Choosing images

I thought adding a photograph of myself to the bio page would make my site more personal, the notion of 'putting a face to the name', On my foundation course one of the briefs was to take self portraits, within this experimentation I created a series of fun and entertaining images. I thought it would be interesting to use one of these on the about page to show who I am, but without being a generic headshot photograph.

 

 

I may decide to remove or change this image at a later date as it was taken over two years ago now, but at the minute I just want to create some content within my site. 

I feel the decision of which images to include within my site will be crucial, I briefly looked through images taken from my Foundation course, first year and current work. The main issue with older work is the quality of photographs - in the past I was not bothered about the alignment and lighting when documenting my work. For the time being the majority of the images will be if past work as the pieces I am working on now are not at the stage that they could be effectively photographed.

Creating posts

Creating a new post was very similar to creating a new page, to ensure it was linked up with the correct drop down menu within the gallery I had to tick the appropriate category. 

 

 

Individual post pages also had links to social network sites, I removed these, but there was also a comment box at the bottom of each page. Again I felt this function made it feel like an interactive blog, I do not want to use this platform to gain feedback, I purely want to present my work.

 

The first page I created was linked to the painting category, to find this image you have to hover the mouse over gallery, wait for the drop down menu to appear and click on painting. The one thing I do not like about this format is that the date the image was posted is visible, this may just be the template I have used- but I am going to look into having this removed. 

The bible that is wordpress codex, I intend to search this website for ways to remove the date stamp from each post. If it is not possible to remove the date stamp I will consider chaging the use of pages ather than posts as these do not keep dates.  

Under each image within my website I plan to write the title, year created, medium and size.

Removing social network links

 

When creating my pages initially I did not notice that at the bottom of each one there were links to Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Google plus. I felt having these at the bottom of the page made the website look more like a log than a formal website.

To remove this function I had to individually edit each page, via 'quick edit' unselecting 'show likes' and 'show sharing buttons'. 

Categorising artworks

To make it easier to navigate through images of my artwork I thought it would be beneficial to create different categories relating to practice; drawing, sculpture and painting. These titles are relativley broad, taken from the strands within my course, some pieces of work may cross over between categories so I will decide on an individual basis which they lie in.

 

 

Once I had created the categories I had to go into the appearance section to arrange and link them to a page. The initial order I had chosen for the pages was reversed once put into the template. To me these did not seem to make sense, reading from right to left, so I went back to the menu structure turning them back to front; making them read home, bio, gallery, ppp2, news, contact.

 

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I had already invisaged the categories becoming visible to the site by hovering over the gallery icon in the form of a drop down menu, I just had to learn how to do this. To ensure that the categories are viewed as a drop down menu from the gallery icon I had to shift them over to sub itmes listed below gallery.

 

The final arrnagment, reading from left to right, with the categories viewed as a drop down menu.



Creating pages

Within Wordpress there are hundreds of preset designs or templates, this is one of the benefits of using such a website. Rather than using coding creating my own complex design I can simply choose a them and it will format all current pages and any additional ones. The theme I have chosen is quite straightforward, with a bold font and monochrome colour scheme, I felt keeping the design basic would  ensure that the focus remains on my artwork rather than a fancy, overpowering site. 

Before embarking on my own website I thought it would be beneficial to look at a few examples of artists websites. At this point I wasn't focused on the content of the sites, rather the format and how the site has categorised works. For this purpose I looked at a range of artists; from family friends to established artists.

 

Thomas Slater

A family friend who studied at the college for a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design

 

 

Jake and Dinos Chapman

Established Artists

 

 

Rebecca Kunzi

A former student from my high school

I decided on Home, Bio, Gallery, PPP2, News and Content, PPP2 will purely be a link to this blog. Once the website has been assessed I will be removing this page as it does not look professional, I am considering putting a password on the page so only tutors can view it. 

 

 

Home - Key examples of work - slideshow?

Bio - About me, photograph, artist statement

Gallery - Images of work

PPP2 - Hyperlink to this blog describing ideas and the mkaing of the site

News - Exhibitons, press

Contact - email address, links to social media - facebook, blogger