English Bull Terrier Pet Portrait by Naj

Here's a recent pet portrait commission for an English Bull Terrier dog. This was a 9 x 12 inches size pastel portrait (slightly larger than A4) on specialist pastel board.

I worked mainly from one photo, but the client also e-mailed a selection of photos. This made it easier for me to understand and interpret the dog's character and appearance.

If you are interested in commissioning a portrait, or other custom art work, check out Mydepictions Portrait Gallery & Commissions page for more information.

Prints of this artwork (framed/unframed) are currently available to purchase through the secure, internationally selling site ImageKind, just click below to find out more.

Who's Linking to Your Site?

If you have your website verified with Google, there's a cool new tool, the Links tab (see below), in Google Webmaster Tools where you can now check who is linking to you.


Although a major improvement, the only drawback is that it may show the full blog roll of a blog linking to your web site! There may be occasions when in-coming links don't show up, such as when a site linking to yours is not being crawled by or in the Google index.

Another way of checking who is linking to any web site, not just your own, is to use the "link:" command query by typing link:www.mywebsite.com into the search box for Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines, e.g:


This does not work properly in Google. I have heard it said that it is "broken" or "disabled" on purpose (i.e. for their own reasons Google may not want it to work properly). In Google, the the "link:" command only returns a selection of sites, if any, linking to the web site queried. The results will also vary, so this is totally unreliable. You will find hundreds of posts asking about this in the Google webmaster forums!

So, if you want to query the links to a website using the "link:" command, it is better to use both Yahoo and MSN . (Please note: UK versions of Yahoo and MSN given). Remember, if a site linking to yours is not in the search engine queried, it may not show up as a link.

See Checking the Search Engine Index for checking the indexed pages of a website using the "site:" command.

What is a Favicon and what does it do?

The word favicon is shortened from the phrase favourite icon. A favicon is a logo or icon displayed in the address bar when your web pages are viewed. It is also displayed in the bookmark or favourites list, and in tabbed browsing. Not all browsers support them, so where they are not supported, they will not be displayed.

Below, if you look closely, you will see my favicon for my website as it is displayed in the address bar and tabbed browsing of firefox.




I used an image of my artwork for the favicon which I created for free at FavIcon from Pics. You can also create an animated favicon, as well as preview how your favicon might look. Instuctions for adding the favicon to your web site are included.

Why You Cant Stop Image Theft on The Web

There will probably never be a way of stopping image theft on the web. All you can do is to try to make it as difficult as possible for people to steal your images.

Disabling the right click button on the mouse using "no right-click javascript" is one method often advocated, but I dont buy it and here's why. No-right click javascript is very quickly and simply overridden: all that needs to be done is to turn off javascript in your browser settings. Disabling the right-click button is not only irritating for visitors, be might be seen as implying you think your visitors are daft enough not to know how to overcome this. If placed in the head section of a html document, javascript also has the drawback of getting in the way of the search engine spiders. Search engines see words near the start of the HTML document as more important. JavaScript code clutter in the head of the HTML document will just push your keywords further down the page, giving them much less prominence.

I was interested to have this site pointed out to me recently: www.lewisburg.org. Here the no-right click javascript is taken one step further, and a larger image is opened in a javascript generated pop-up window. If javascript is disabled in a browser, the larger image cannot be viewed, and therefore cannot be copied. Wrong! There is no way you are going to stop people being able to take a screen print. Neither will you stop people taking screen prints if you use Flash or scripts to display your images. There is one sure-fire solution for preventing image theft on the web: simply don't post it on the net!

Here's some short, basic advice about methods for helping protect your web images:


• Include a Copyright Statement either as part of a watermark/text on the page or site. At least this way you are letting people know you do not want your images copying.

• Keep the image resolution as low as possible - a low resolution image is not that useful to a copier, and this is probably one of the best methods for protecting your images.

• Keep the physical size of the image as small as possible - a small size image is not much use to a copier.

• Watermark your images - watermarks can be edited out fairly easily using programs like Photoshop. However, it does take time to do so. As an artist, this may not always be possible as you will want to show an image off in its best light.

• Consider keeping some or all images out of search engine image searches - not on the face of it what an artist may want for their website but, if someone was looking for an image to copy, ask yourself: where they would go first? A simple way to keep images out of image searches is to create a folder on your webspace for your images, place your images in the folder, then ban search engine bots from the folder using robots.txt.

My web design resources page.

How to Add a Transparent Watermark to an Image

A lot of people like to add a watermark to their online images to remind people that their work is copyrighted. Watermarks will not stop image theft, and with a bit of work they can be edited out. They can certainly let people know you dont want your work copying and the additional work of having to remove the watermark may serve to discourage a would-be thief.

With images of art work, it is preferable that the watermark does not distract from showing the image in its best light.

Heres how to achieve an embossed style watermark on an image using adobe photoshop 7.0. To find out more about watermarking images take a look under GRAPHICS RELATED RESOURCES on my Free Web Design Resources page.

Image Watermarking Tutorial

Open photoshop then open your image file in photoshop: Go to File>Open, then select the image you want to work with.

If tools are not open (see below), open them from the main menu bar by going to Window>tools.


In the tools box, click on the T symbol to select the horizontal text type tool (see above).

Below the main menu bar you will now see boxes, each with drop down lists, for selecting the font type, size and weight etc. For this type of watermark, it is best to select a clear, simple sans serif type font.


Select the myriad font, bold weight, smooth style from the drop down lists. The font size will depend on the actual size of the image, but to start with maybe try selecting 14pt.

Choose a grey font colour by clicking in the font colour box, below the main menu bar, and selecting from the pop-up color picker:



On your image left click and drag the mouse so a box is formed for the text:


Type your text in the box. You can get a copyright symbol by holding down the alt key while typing 0 1 6 9 on the number key pad. You can highlight the text and change the font size in the box below the maim menu bar. You can also resize/re-position the text box by clicking & dragging on the small squares at the edges of the box.

Next, on the main menu bar select layer>layer style>blending options:


Copy the layer style settings shown below:


You can change the opacity and fill opacity settings to get the desired transparency for your watermark. I have chosen 50% but this may vary depending on the grey font colour.

Next save your image. Use File>save as from the main menu bar to save a copy of your watermarked image in jpg file format.



When prompted for a resolution, choose a low setting as shown below.


Now you have a flat (i.e. no layers) watermarked image.

Building an Artist Website

When I set out to plan my website, www.mydepictions.co.uk, one of the first things I did was to have a look at lots of other artist's websites, to see how their sites had been designed. I also read general advice and guidance on setting up a website.

One good article I found is Sinning when you're winning: Top 10 mistakes: What not to do with your website. The article is aimed at small businesses, but even if your website or art work is a hobby, this article has some very good advice.

Below are what I think are three of the most common web design mistakes and annoyances found on artist web sites and why.

1. Little or No Written Content: I don't think I have ever seen an artist's web site that was all words or lacked images! I have though seen the opposite: nearly all images and very few words. Minimalist sites may look very swish and sophisticated, but the lack of words (less than 300 on a web page) will do very little for your visibility in search engines. This doesn't matter if you don't mind being a needle in a haystack!

2. Slow-loading Pages: This is usually due to image use. Either there are too many images on one page, the image file size is too large, or an image such as jpeg file format has been reduced on actual the web page (by specifying height and width in the html). Slow-loading pages can look unprofessional and they will definitely loose visitors to your web site, more than a few seconds with my broadband connection, and I am off! Not everyone has high-speed broadband.
   

3. Banner Overload: Banners are not all bad, and banner exchanges can bring visitors to your web site. Lots and lots of banners on a web page, though, can make your site look pretty garish , tacky or cheap and slow down page load.
   

Mydepictions in Website Design Gallery

I worked hard to build Mydepictions - Original Art by Naj web site from scratch. Its not perfect, the html is old-fashioned, and there will always be some tweaking/improvement that needs doing as I continue to develop the site. When I saw "If you're proud of a site you've built why not submit it to the gallery" on the about Web Design network, I thought, why not? I couldn't see any hand-built designs like mine in the design gallery. You can read some critism on the site in Design ideas don't have to be hard to find. If you are looking for layout and design ideas for websites, or just want to check out www.mydepictions.co.uk entry, why not visit the about webdesign design gallery. If you are interested in html, building your own web site or auction template, I have compiled a list of useful free web design resources on my web site.

Also see Mydepictions - Original Art by Naj Website Featured on about.com Network on The Independent Artists Group Blog.

Interview with Naj

Why not check out my interview: A Very Classic Lady - IAG Artist, Naj of Norfolk, UK, posted January 10, 2007 on the IAG (Independent Artists Group) blog.

The interview was conducted by Independent Artist Group memeber, Lar Shackelford, and was one of several IAG artist interviews posted during the recent IAG exhibition.

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my artist blog! Here I hope to share recent news about my art work and my artist website: www.mydepictions.co.uk, plus my ramblings about building a website. Lets get this straight: I am not a professional web master, or a techie, just an enthusiastic amateur web designer who has hand-built my own web site. Why? Because I found I enjoyed hand coding, I wanted full control over design, layout and modifying content, plus I wanted a challenge! There are many areas I lack knowledge in, or need to update, and, there is much to learn. In short, I am no webmaster, but rather, master of my own web site. I have learnt a lot of what I know from others on the web and, in turn, am happy to disseminate that knowledge.

The eye picture in my profile is in fact a self portrait! I use it as a favicon for my web site, here on my blog, and in other profiles. As an artist, I mostly produce portraits and other custom art commissions. I am able to turn my hand to many different styles and techniques, which most likely has been a hinderance, rather than a help! (Highly sucessful artists seem to have specialised in, or evolved a single style or technique.) I offer promotional samples of small format art work for auction under the ebay user ID mydepictions. If you want to find out more about my artistic interests and background check out about the artist Naj.