My sunset sketch

I have been dabbling with Sketchbook Pro (among other drawing apps) on my Mom’s iPad lately. I have to say it’s pretty fun to work with. Not quite a Wacom tablet killer, Sketchbook has a few limitations, but it certainly has it’s uses considering the price difference between the two. Sketchbook just needs to support larger canvases and it’ll be golden.

When the next generation iPads come out next spring, I’m going to have to look into getting one. For a device that doesn’t really have any uses, it certainly is a lot of fun to play with.

I’ve been monkeying around with WordPress for the last month or so. I think I now have a pretty good handle on it’s inner workings, so I’ve been able to make this theme a little more compact and unique from the pedestrian default look, or my old theme.

Anyway, I may still make some changes to the graphics through the next several weeks, but I hope I can stick with this one for quite some time before I get bored with it.

My calendars

I really like having a personalized wall calendar. Normally, I have been using the freebe calendars provided by a realtor, which isn’t all bad, because they’re peppered with virtually all the  local events. But, I personally prefer to display my own artwork on my walls, even if it’s not the best.

A couple of years ago, I made a calendar based on my illustrations from Mistletoe’s Night. I used iPhoto on my Mom’s Mac to assemble the calendar and add holidays and personalized dates on it. I was really happy with the final product, even though it was a tad pricey.

Last month, I made another calendar, based on some of my photos, using the same tools I had used the last time with the same results. I really wanted to try a different service like Snapfish (to get away from Apple), but I really didn’t like the general look of their formating. It was a little hard to tell from their illustrations what the final product will look like, but I wasn’t terribly keen on their options.

Happy new year!

As you can see I changed the theme again. I just wasn’t happy with the previous attempt. I for the life of me could not make the background work with the text in the foreground. Hopefully, I’ll be happy with this theme for a while at least.

I decided I didn’t like the look of this site, it was my first attempt with WordPress after all. Anyway, I kept the layout the same, but I redid the bulk of the graphics and colors. As well as fixing as much as I could of WordPress’s sloppy HTML and CSS coding from the default theme they provide. I’m still tinkering with it, so it should be finalized soon. The background image is a work-in-progresss illustration from my next book.

Everything seems to be finally in place now. I have just a few more tweaks left to do, mostly browser specific adjustments.

I really don’t have much to report on from over the Summer. I have begun work on another children’s book, which I am hoping to have done by Christmas. I plan to use some of my vacation days to work on it in the near future. I’m also in the market for a new camera; my current one took an unexpected ride in the washing machine today. At least it wasn’t an expensive camera.

I haven’t actually posted anything on here all summer, but I plan to try and post more often.

I’ve been making some changes lately. I just switched my hosting to something a little simpler and less expensive, and I’ve also ditched my own custom content management system for WordPress. I figured it just wasn’t worth while continuing work on my own custom CMS when there are plenty better and free alternatives out there. And I figured I may as well join the crowd.

This new site is still a work in progress, so there are a few rough spots left for me to fill in. I got bored of the simplistic white version of my old site fairly quickly, so I dabbled around with several designs until I came to what you see. I would like to rotate the backgound theme with a day/night and seasonal cycle as well. Also, I moved all of my works to several other sites, such as Vimeo and Picasa.

I just finished the winter version of my iGoogle Houses Theme. I tried to make it relatively generic in avoiding anything directly related to the holidays, since this theme is supposed to last through February. I’ll need to come up with a Spring theme next and after that I don’t know. I still need to make a theme based off the illustrations from my book.