Most probably won’t notice, but I have made a bit of a change around here. First of all, the URL. I’ve moved the location of my blog from a sub-directory to the main page on the domain. If anyone is visiting the site via the old link, it will still work because I added a fancy redirect on the file and I’ve also updated my feed so unless you are keeping an eagle eye on your URL field, you probably won’t notice a different.

Unless you are poking through the archives, I’m still figuring how out to move my archive redirects to the root folder. I might have to republish each entry which could take some time.

The only other significant change is that I am considering getting rid of the rest of my website - portfolio, galleries, links, etc. Right now, I just do not see the need for it. I think I’m going through a bit of an open and honest transition with myself. Self-examination if you will.

I’ve come to the realization that my portfolio is weak. Ok, it’s amazingly weak*. The rest of the galleries are purely for self indulgent, ego-boosting purposes. Like my trip photos. But really, my reason is a lot more simple than that. I don’t want to put work on the internets just for the sake of putting work on the internets. Cyberspace is already awash with mediocrity and I don’t want to add to it.

Ultimately, my decision is that until I feel like my portfolio is much, much stronger, I’m going to refrain from having an online portfolio. Plain and simple. Though, I’ll admit that I’m probably in a phase of lower than normal confidence in my abilities and work. Yup, I’m having some issues.

Now the blog will definitely stay. This blog has done wonders for my work ethic over the past year so there is no way I’d wanna give it up. So most of my work will - technically - be online through updates and all that stuff. There just won’t be a portfolio/gallery anymore.

To be honest, I was probably the only one going in those galleries anyway.

ETA: Ok, so my permalinks are bitched. Sorta. When I moved the blog, I didn’t account for my .htaccess file (which I don’t think I have access to). So for right now, my archives are accessible, but the only with an ugly permalink (/?p123 - yuck!). I have sent an email to J begging for assistance. I want my pretty permalinks back, damn it!

*Not saying my work is necessarily weak. It just has no direction so its all over the map. Thus, creating a pretty weak portfolio.

I don’t have a photo update because I’m lazy. I did some work though. You’ll just have to trust me.

I also managed to go through my portfolio last night to see if there was anything in there that I wanted to submit for the show. And ya know, there isn’t. Nothing jumped out at me, nothing that I felt deserving enough to submit. It was kind of annoying.

Even so, I think I have settled on at least two pieces to submit - the one I am currently working on and my self-portrait from January. I have an idea for a third piece, but its something I haven’t even started yet and with the June 15th deadline, I’m not even sure it will be finished. Especially with the fact that I’m not even close to being finished the current graphite piece.

If I burn a little midnight oil, I can probably get the current piece done before the end of May. I’m starting to make good progress, methinks. Then I’ll assess whether or not I can have the new idea finished by June 15th. I’d be working in a different medium (oil pastels), so it could go either way.

That said, I’m not going to be hardcore about it. If it gets done, it gets done. If not, then I only submit two pieces. My ego isn’t large enough that I feel that I have to submit three, ya know?

Ugh. So busy. Being back from the long weekend makes a person busy enough, but couple that with the fact that I have to look after another co-workers stuff (which seems to be more busy than me) while she is out of the office. It sucks really a lot.

And yeah, I did nowhere near the amount of work I wanted to on this piece. I did like 2 hours last night. Wow, slacker. But what can I say? It was a bit of a busy weekend!

His nose needs a lot of work - especially with respect to the shadowing. But he looks more like a boy! And he looks more like J too, which is nice. Now if I could put in some decent time on this piece, I think I could have it ready to submit to the show . I just need to figure out what other pieces to submit.

I guess that means I should root through my portfolio tonight. Hrm.

As the subject line says, Josh managed to fix my gallery problems. Woo! It was an image conversion thing and after my flip-flopping between GD and ImageMagick. He managed to get the GD library going as apparently my current gallery script doesn’t really work very well under ImageMagick.

So yay. Now, I can stop pulling my hair out. Except only not because I’m looking at a new gallery script anyway. Geez. Yes, I have those pesky masochistic tendencies, thankyewverymuch.

It has comments and is MySQL based. That is the only reason. Though, let’s be honest, my galleries are so big that I could be over this new script thing in like seconds.

The fact that I haven’t posted here in a couple days does not allude me. Honestly, I haven’t really even put pencil to paper in a few days. Sad, I know. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been productive. I’ve been reading a lot of Loomis as of late. He explains proportion very well. I really appreciate his techniques and explanations. He’s pretty meticulous, which is nice - meticulous is good in these types of circumstances. As I am brushing up on the reading, I guess its not all bad. Its not like I have been spending copious amounts of time on some dumb online rpg. ahem. ok, haven’t been spending all my time on said rpg.

I’ve also updated my online portfolio I’ve added a shitload of old work that has been waiting to be uploaded. A lot of it isn’t very good, but I like the reminder of what I used to do. And ya know, in looking at my old work, it’s really a big mish-mash of stuff. I think the only real theme that runs throughout is people. Well, for the most part. Most of my studies aren’t people.

I’ve also been considering putting a link to this blog on my main website. I’m debating because truthfully, there is really only one person who knows anything about this blog and that’s kinda refreshing. I mean, even though its only an art blog - it still allows me to be pretty candid. My fear is that if I open it up to the masses (well, the masses being family and friends) then I’ll feel like I have to censor myself somewhat, which is something I’m not particularly interested in.

Still, even if I don’t link the blog on the main page, I am going to join some sort of directory listing, to test the waters if you will. I mean, I have no qualms about strangers reading my blog. Though, I can’t for the life of me understand why they would wanna.

At any rate, I hope to be back doing the same old, same old and posting drawings tomorrow maybe.