What's new?

Well, this blog is new for a start! But what else is new with drawmyface? First a little history:
drawmyface was started way back in 2001, under the superbly original title - "Caricatures by Dan". I had a sketchpad full of faces and people said I should show them to other people, so I bought a book entitled "A Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Webpage", and set about creating a webpage. I coded all the HTML by hand (which took a loooooong time), and the design was very basic, and to be fair, some of the drawings weren't that good either. But at the time I was very proud of my shiny new website, and I became interested in developing the idea.

I soon changed the name of the site to drawmyface, (you can see a screenshot of the old site here . . . as you can see, it doesn't look too good on my 800x600 screen!) at which point I registered the domain name www.drawmyface.co.uk, and started trying to get the site noticed. For a while I offered custom drawn caricatures and portraits from photographs, but I found I didn't really enjoy drawing people I didn't know, so I stopped offering the service. Then I moved to China!

In August 2003 I decided to spend 5 months teaching English in a highschool in Northern China. The 5 months turned into a year, then two years, and here I am midway through my third year, now studying Chinese at Jiaotong University in Shanghai. Anyway, despite having a lot of free time, I found I was drawing less and less (for the first year I hardly picked up a pencil). Then, during my second year, a friend suggested I try painting something. Since painting materials are a lot cheaper in China than in England, I bought everything I needed and gave it a shot. My first painting - Thom Yorke - came out a bit sketchy, but not bad for a first attempt, so I tried again, and sold my second painting - Jeff Buckley - to a friend here in China. My family find it very amusing that I didn't know I could paint, but it's true, I guess it comes naturally with being able to draw. Now I have a total of 8 paintings in my gallery, and I feel like I'm improving with each one.

But now my painting was progressing, I wasn't happy with the look of the website anymore, and the gallery was awkward, only showing 3 images on one page, all different sizes. So in August this year, having recently acquired a laptop and the Dreamweaver software, I set about a complete redesign (the prior knowledge of HTML makes Dreamweaver soooo much easier to use). I started with a flashy display panel, which showed a preview of the image when you moved your pointer over the thumbnail (see a screenshot here . . .) It looked very nice, but I found it wasn't at all practical. There were too many graphics on the page, and the layout was all messed up if the user changed the text size in their browser.

So I decided to make the site more text based, with just a few graphics, and I used a wonderful scrolling gallery from Dynamic Drive, enabling all the thumbnail images to be displayed on a single page. There's still a bit to be done to the site, but overall I'm happy with the new look.

Some new additions are:
Google Adsense. This helps me pay for hosting the site, by providing users with relevant ads and a Google search bar. When people click on the ads they are interested in, I get paid. If you would like to get Google Adsense for your website, please follow the link on my homepage . . .

Tell a Friend. Do you know someone who might be interested in drawmyface? Now there's a very easy way to let your friends know about it, by clicking on the "Tell a Friend" button on the homepage . . . you just put in their e-mail addresses (up to 5 at a time) and submit the form. (Thanks for your help in spreading the word, it's this that helps me keep the site going!)

Javascript by Dynamic Drive. This site has some excellent free scripts to make your site more dynamic. I used the C-motion scrolling image gallery, and the gradual highlight image scripts.

I have a few more features planned, such as the drawing board, which will show a painting being painted, from blank canvas, through various stages, to completion, with an explanation of the techniques used. Also, when redesigning the site, I decided that some of the pictures weren't good enough to go in the gallery anymore, so I took them out. But I'm going to put them in the scrapbook section, along with some drafts, incomplete drawings and anything else that didn't make it into the gallery. I'll get these features online asap, but my priority right now is more drawing and painting!!!

As always, thanks for your support and kind words. Your feedback is always appreciated.

Dan