Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Keep Up With Drawing!

I've done lots of modeling and texturing since graduating from AAU, but I haven't done enough drawing.  I've been plenty busy, but I do wish I'd taken more time for this.

So, I'm going to try to practice my drawing at least a few times a week, if not every day.

And today, I decided to draw some eyeballs.  I quickly realized though that I wasn't drawing circles as easily as I used to!  I've gotten rusty.  So, I did this circle sketch page (this is a good exercise anyway), and turned some into eyes.

This blog is partly about the realities of being a working artist, and sometimes that means you get rusty in one area or another.


Sunday, March 10, 2013

Web Site Improvements

I've done a lot of updating on my new site already!  Here are some details:


  • Added a link to my deviantArt page, and one to my main YouTube channel, at the very bottom of every page.
  • Added a Facebook "like" button at the bottom left.
  • Made my name in the upper left corner link to the bio page.
  • Consolidated the links on the top bar by adding some as subsections to others.
    • digital sketching is now under modeling
    • The videos and reviews blog is now under blog
    • A new page has been added, cultural terminology project, under drawing

The cultural terminology project was one I did for an AAU class in Fall, 2009.  It's truly a gallery unto itself.

Wix is making it really easy to tweak and improve my site, so keep an eye on it for more additions and changes.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Welcome to the New JonFesmire.Com!

Well, this has been a good diversion!  Important, too.

Today, I'm actually writing a number of articles for my main freelance job.  So, why am I writing in my blog? Oddly enough, the change of pace should make it easier to get back to the articles.  I can write freely here, without having to do any research.  I can just say what's on my mind.

It was unbelievably easy to switch my domain hosting over from GoDaddy to Wix.  (Fast, too! The Wix site said it could take up to 72 hours, and it was moved over within minutes.) I'm still a GoDaddy customer.  They're my domain registrar, so I'll be paying them about $24 per year for my domain, http://jonfesmire.com/, and to keep my private registration info private.  But Wix, wow.  I wrote a lot of HTML in the 90s, when I was working in the dot coms.  Those were good years.  Anyway, now, I just want to work on my site with visual elements, similar to creating a PowerPoint file.  Wix lets me do that.  Wordpress was all right, but it's obvious when you're on a Wordpress site.  Here, I can arrange the visual and text elements however I please.  It's very right brained.

Here's a plan I thought up while I was writing the last paragraph.

Blogger, which I'm using now, allows users to create lots of blogs.  I decided that "Ramblings of an Art Geek," which I created a few years ago, would make a nice personal blog title.  However, there are other blogs I'd like to write.  For instance, I used to review book for SF Site.  You can still find my reviews, and reviews by others about my books, there.  It's well worth a visit.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  I've been reading a lot of great fiction since early last year.  I had a long period there where I read mostly nonfiction and read hardly any novels at all.  Then, I read "The Haunted Vagina" by Carlton Mellick, and all that changed.  I've read a ton of his books, but I've also been zipping through a lot of other novels.  If I'm not reading a great novel, I feel like I'm missing something.  So, I thought it would be fun to do a book review blog.  SF Site would probably welcome me back, and I'd get free books to boot, but I want to do this on my own time, with books I really want to read.  I've got quite a backlog of books I'd like to review, actually.

You know how, now and then, I do tutorial videos?  They're not the greatest, but when I figure out a technique in Maya or Zbrush, I like to share it with others.  Time permitting, I may create a tutorials blog.

Plus, I should link my old blogs, for the sake of completeness and history.  The Wix editor makes it really, really easy to include all that.

Like I said in my last entry, back to work!  These articles are definitely not going to write themselves.

New Site

You may have noticed a huge change in the look of my site.  Wordpress has been fun, but lacks the ability to make serious design changes.  I wanted to be able to customize my site without knowing too much HTML, and Wordpress is rather restrictive.

Who else has been seeing all those Wix ads on Facebook?  I've been getting a lot of them.  Since I enjoy working on websites, I decided to give it a try.  Well, I liked what I saw, and got to work on a new design.

At the moment, I'm still working on getting my domain name switched over.  So, if you happen to read this blog on Blogger, you'll get the news before everyone else.

Back to work!