Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

There are so many images online, and so many more being created every day. Some are free, some are royalty free, some have licenses that you have to purchase in order to use the image, and some you just cannot even legally touch.

Are you using images that you have permission to use?

For those who have been in the blogging community for more than a decade, especially the “personal blog” niche, during 2004 through 2007, there were a lot of websites that used celebrity images. Some of these images were “blended” or pics spliced and mixed together in a way that made the image attractive. This was great practice for newbie graphic designers who played with Photoshop or other graphic editors to make their images look great.

Unfortunately, licensing on pictures of celebrities, including actors, musicians, and editors required graphic artists to personally contact the original photographer for permission. Even some artwork, like paintings, and other types of photography were required that the user either ask for permission to use and sometimes even require credit back to the original source/ artist.

Of course, a lot of webmasters were not found of this, but did remove what creative works did not comply.

However, since those years, stock photos, free images, and other types of licensed works have come into play.

For a dollar or more, website owners can use a cool vector image created by another, or perhaps a stock photo of some place relevant to what they are writing about. However, for every person who pays to legally use images that require licensing, there are many more who just take and use on whim.

While the main party to blame is the actual person illegally using an image that requires licensing, Google has also been fairly responsible for this. Think about it.

Go to Google. Click on the images tab. Do a search on an image. When Google displays the results, slowly hover over the first 4 rows and see how many links to stock photo sites come up. It should be a few, especially if you do a search on vector images (any type)…

However, next time you search for an image you need for your website or even graphics… think about it… do you have permission to use it???

The are so many different charitable organizations out there. With natural disasters, poverty and more, there is always a need for either monetary help or even volunteering. Even art advocacy for children in need is just as important.

Singforhope.org is an organization that does this and even partners with other organizations to raise funds for all sorts of causes. The main goal of Singforhope is to gather professional artists in any genre to volunteer in community services in the name of art.

For those who are graphic designers and web designers, this might be a great organization to be a part of. With the growing Internet, and even how much of the graphic and web design community has developed since the 1990s, there are a lot of subjects to cover and teach young aspiring artists this this niche. It is also a great way to give back to the community in a way you know best.

There are so many under privileged children who attend schools that may not have the funding for certain arts. This makes it hard for those children who yearn to achieve dreams like becoming a singer, a writer, a photographer, a dancer, a graphic designer, and much more.

Sing For Hope can help you make a change in your community.

I wanted to share this organization with with my readers here at Blondish.net because: to me, art has always been important. I have been fortunate to attend schools that had the funding, but as I grew up and moved to different states (because I was a military brat), I met people who were not so fortunate. And because of that lack in having classes to teach certain arts, even music, using computers for graphic arts, or dance, the potential talent is never developed.

While I have helped online to teach both web and graphic design, I would love to see children who are interested in these same arts to be taught as well. Please check out SingForHope.org and see if you can fill a need.

DeviantART has been extremely busy these past few months. Today they rolled out a new feature and launched another to the public from beta mode.

Oh, and I there were some noticed a few design tweaks to the color of the message inbox system too!

The one huge feature that was rolled out was “Stacks.” Because of groups, some of them had thousands of members. This would flood the inbox of anyone watching the group. In fact, this was a big peeve that turned up and I even had to grumble. With the new stacks system, if a group or person has submitted several art pieces or writings, it will be stacked instead of individually listed. The user can choose to delete the the whole stack all at once, or click on the stack to view all of the submissions. This is a huge relief, especially for even users like myself who watch a lot of artists.

DeviantART Groups was launched to the public. Now anyone can make a group. The only feature I am really rooting for is the ability to have a forum within the group. It is possible with regular profiles, so I am not sure why it has not been added to groups yet. Right now, members can only comment in the community blog posts and the comment section on the front page. For larger groups, this could prove problematic if there are a lot of messages. A forum would help with the organization.

It is great to see DeviantART adding more features. By the way, they are the place to get some really great emoticons and were the inspiration of why I started making my own smilies here at Blondish.net so others can download and use.

Do you use DeviantART? Have you noticed their new features? What do you think of them? Any suggestions for other features they should consider?

I have decided to include different types of artwork and some description as there are many types of art out there and not everyone is aware of the different styles. In this entry, it is all about chibi art. Chibi art is a genre of art that some associate with a type of anime drawing. Often the head is large and the body is small and somewhat deformed. No, it is not deformed in a way that is ugly, but deformed in a way similar to that of caricature art. This type is usually digitally drawn, painted (water color) or drawn on paper, scanned, and then colored in whatever the artist uses to edit the piece. Often it is denote cuteness.

Allwords.com defines chibi as:

1. a child-like character with exaggerated features, particularly in anime
2. a style of cartooning in which the characters are drawn to be very small and cute

I went out and found a selection of great artwork on DeviantArt that I think best conveys this style of art.

Queenie by celesse

Mei by Danime-chan

Puffy Puffy by kamiyoshi

Ellen Nightly Chibi by kawaiihannah

Chocolate box II by meago

Chibi by Miriamele

HJ: Natsu Matsuri by MoogleGurl

Sweet Lolita Heetteri by QueenofDorks

Chibi Fruit Ninja-Deidara by Red-Priest-Usada

My Lucky Star by trenchmaker

Cute enough? Have you heard of this style of art? If so, anyone you like that you would recommend to those who enjoy viewing this type of artwork?

I love to look at art and one of my favorite forms to look at and even dabble in is the art of vectoring. There are quite a few talented vector/ vexel artists out there. Of course, I could list a lot, but I did some digging beyond what I normally have access to and found 15 vector art pieces that really knocked my socks off. The images are merely slivers of the whole piece of artwork, and beneath each will list the DeviantART user’s name and the title of the piece as well as a link to be able to view the entire piece.

Pepper Vector by Artgerm

Baby on Fire by Beachblonde

Bondage Beauty by ChewedKandi

All The World’s A Stage by DarkExodite

Mustang Mach 1 by DaemonX

Vector Comic Project Colored by elflling

Saya Vector by Eye-crazy

Frangipani by Ikue

Cherry blossom by justa

Strawberry blonde pin up by kinkei

Vector Kid by Lawnz

Vector Art – In My Past Life by rames

Golden One by stlcrazy

Psychedelic Sunfall by surflogic

Geisha by vivalanat

What do you think? Did some of these pieces knock your socks off (not exactly literally, but I am asking if you were a bit impressed)? Do you recommend any vector artists and their pieces from DeviantArt that I have not listed?

I have been on DeviantArt for more than 4 years. I have been adding a lot of my fanart and original work lately. If you are a member there, perhaps we can exchange DA watch.

The latest I have put up are my original work for my novel, Shinju no Miko, which I will be re-doing the title to be, The Pearl Priestess. Although I draw the characters with an anime flair, it is not exactly intended for just anime purposes. It was for an illustration. I just happen to be in an anime phase at the moment.

Anyway, hope to see you over there too!

I was talking with a gal, whom I would probably call a colleague when it comes to art in general. She was having issues finding the right colors to inspire her to make her next website layout and not being inspired. Of course, for color issues I told her right away that she should try ColourLovers as a way to look at palettes others have put together. However I also went into explaining about inspiration works for writers and artists in the same way. It is all about experience. Inspiration can be in anything: the color of a dewdrop dripping from the petals of a flower, in the way a person walks, the shape and texture of an object, and much more. Life is an unending inspiration. Art is Life and life is art. I am not sure if there is a famous phrase similar, but if there is, I would have quoted it already. I am just writing from my experience.

If you want to write about something, but do not know anything about the subject, you research the matter. If you want to draw a picture of a rare object, you find pictures or the real thing. All of the senses are used in finding inspiration.

Web design is a form of art. Yes, it involves a process that may be difficult for some, but the design of a webpage is very much a part of expressing oneself. Often website design takes on trends from time to time and it can be seen. Webmasters learn and inspire each other to build the next layout that becomes eyecandy for others to enjoy. Some share how they accomplish their amazing work through tutorials.

So, if you want to build a website and you just cannot seem to find that exact inspiration, look around and read up on new ways to take your layout and of course, your website to the next level.

It has been a long time since I have pixelled any images for download here, so I thought I might scrounge some up. I took a look at my current smilies available, and found that I had not made any extra icons for my 15 x 15 round smilies.

Here is a preview of the set.

There are 18 total GIF images within the package. Please visit the emoticon page to download.