Required viewing for every American

Some kind of virus

The first sickness of Fall is upon us. I am glad that it's pretty mild so far. There has been fever up to about 102 for Little Man (age 3). Fever up to about 100 for Little Guy (1 year old). There is a bit of coughing, but overall there isn't much respiratory worry, and that's good.
My daughter had a fever of 102 and missed two days of school. She's doing better now.

I have had Fever up to about 100 or so for me. Most of the time, my fever just hangs around 99. I have a pretty low body temperature most of the time, so when I have 99, I feel just awful. I would really prefer it just go on up to 101 and let's get this over with.

The weird thing about me is that when I feel bad, I feel even more driven to get stuff done. I made the bed today. I haven't made my bed in the last 60 days that I felt good! If only I really could be able to get more things done. It is very frustrating to feel bad. But it's better to get it over now, and hopefully I won't be sick around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

If you do anything creative, and you have been looking for a place for a website or an online portfolio, I discovered something new the other day. Actually, not totally new. I received an invitation to test this website in it's 'beta' mode back in August, but I just got around to trying it. The site is called ImpactFolio.

This is not an ad or even an affiliate link for ImpactFolio. I'll just tell you about it.

The site has several pluses...number one being that it's free right now if you want to try it out. They won't even ask for your billing information. I thought that was very cool. I hate sites that claim something's free, but then, if you forget to cancel it by their nit picky rules, the next thing you know, you've got a charge on your credit card bill. (argh)
You can check out the portfolio I set up within one day - http://www.impactfolios.com/ddixonart/
Can you believe I set that up within one day? It was just a bit here and a bit there, too.

So it's definitely easy for someone who does art or photography and wants to whip something together fast, so they'll have more time for their art. It also wasn't exhausting. If you've ever tried to upload images to sites, you know how you can sit there and just sigh, waiting for the dang thing to upload...and I have DSL. On ImpactFolios, my images uploaded in a snap...I couldn't believe how consistently fast they uploaded.

At the basic level, you can only have four portfolios. I think you get more when you upgrade.
I just found that merging categories, like Portraits of Women and Portraits of Men together, could help get more room. In each portfolio, there seems to be plenty of room.

By signing up for the beta version and helping them work out bugs (and telling them what you wish the site would do), you are rewarded with a lifetime 25% discount if you wish to upgrade either now or when the beta session is over. They will give at least 30 days before the beta version ends, to give you the option of moving your stuff somewhere else or upgrading with ImpactFolios.

If you pay monthly, the charge is $21. A 25% discount would take $5.25 off, making it $15.75 monthly.
I pay $12 monthly for my site on Tripod, and I can have TONS of pages. So if you can handle a sitebuilder and a little bit slower going on the uploading, you should probably try a site like Tripod. Then again, there are good sites you can set up that are totally free ('forever') but are also limited in space like ImpactFolios at the free level. FreeWebs.com is one that I've tried and found it pretty easy. The layouts are not as impressive as those on ImpactFolios though.

Downsides of Tripod are that you can get a domain name to go with your site on Tripod, but if you ever leave Tripod, you will lose that URL that you have worked hard marketing and promoting. That is a major downside.
I have also heard that if you are on a server that also posts porn sites (unless your site is also of an adult nature!) that will hurt your site ranking. I think Tripod does. Overall, Tripod has a better siteranking than FreeWebs or ImpactFolios. Impact folios is new but not doing too bad with their 333,000 or so Alexa site ranking. Freewebs ranks at 340 today. (the lower the number, the better it is ranking, and so therefore the better your site would rank if you had it with them). Tripod is at 438. Hard to believe that Tripod is ranking lower than FreeWebs. (huh?!?)
Geocities.com is at an amazing 39. I never tried them, maybe I should...

Bottom line, if you just need a very quick but impressing looking website for your photography, art, or crafts (even cake designers could use it!) why not go ahead and give ImpactFolios a try, since it's free now...and you'd be locking in that lifetime discount in case you end up wanting to go with them.

I was updating my profile on Linkedin.com and it had a section to put comments about college.

Here's what I wrote....

I was too immature when I was in college. I hated college because I wasn't there with any clear purpose. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I simply pursued a degree in English, not knowing what I would do with it when I got it.

I did get my 'MRS' degree (met my husband at college and got married). If I were to go back to college today, I know precisely what I'd do and how I'd accomplish my goals. It would be a no-brainer.

I'd get an MBA in Business Administration and also get degrees in Marketing and Advertising.
I'd also love to go to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design)

Maybe I'll be that 90 year old woman you read about in the newspaper, finally getting her degree. LOL

Here is a pencil portrait I did of Jackie Ginn, as an American Business Women's Association Chapter's Woman of the Year Award Portrait. Jackie is the Corporate Accounts manager for the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce. She has really been valuable to our ABWA Chapter.

She was caught off-guard by the portrait presentation at our last meeting. She told me it was the best gift she thought she'd ever gotten. Of course it thrilled me to hear that!

"...thank you again for the magnificent pencil drawing....I was truly stunned and appreciative and am very humbled by your talent."

Here is the colored pencil portrait in progress. You can see it further done in the post below.

I signed this colored pencil portrait, but once I photographed it and looked at it on the computer screen, I saw that there is a lot more work to be done on this portrait. My favorite part of this portrait so far is his nose and his left cheek (the one on the right in the portrait from our view). Least favorite parts: his hair, especially the bangs that need to be softened, and the top of his head, which I plan to darken a bit and add more details.

Here are some first birthday pictures. The second picture is Little Guy's semi-irritated look. Have you ever seen eyes so blue?

Today is Little Guy's very first birthday!
Oh boy, so much went on today I hope I can keep it all straight!

I baked the cake for Little Guy while he napped, and DD2 (Dear Daughter 2) frosted and decorated it. She put M&M's on the top of the cake. I already had a #1 candle.

We had sliced ham, mashed potatoes, , green beans, and iced tea for dinner.
Little Guy got the cake all over his face and I did get some good pictures, I just need to upload them to the computer and print some out. Little Man blew out the candle and helped little brother unwrap his gift. Little Guy didn't really understand it, so we mostly opened it and then let him lift the flaps of the box, then he started digging in there.

His first birthday gift was a Duplo Winnie the Pooh train. It goes together like a puzzle and like duplo blocks, and has Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Roo, and Piglet in the train. They come out. The boys played with the characters during their bath.

I did puzzles with Little Man today. I showed him some flashcards that had some numbers on them. He got quite a few of the numbers right when I asked him what they were. We also played catch with a rubber ball in the house, and then with DD1 we played 'football' ...it is a football ball, but we just faked the game. Little Man holds the ball pretty well under his arm and looks like a miniature professional player :)

Little Man (our 3 year old) did #2 a lot in his Pullups today, I am really getting tired of this. I think I'm going to have to make him do his own wiping/cleaning so he'll be so grossed out he'll start using the toilet properly. I told him all about John Crapper and how he invented the potty so people could go pee and poo poo in that, and not have to do that in our pants. Wasn't that nice of that man to invent that?!? Little Man seemed more affected by a potty training product commercial that a little boy was successfully potty training in. I pointed out to him that 'that little boy is younger than you are, and he can do it, you can do it too!" Sometimes I think I'm getting through, and other times I think he's going ot go to college with doodie in his pants!!!

Today I've cooked, baked, done 3 loads of laundry, 2 loads of dishes (DD2 did the 2nd load), vacuumed the living room, bathed kids, changed diapers and/or Pull Ups, returned a DVD at the video rental place, checked my post office box, got donations together for a charity donation pickup, took out trash, emailed a potential client, worked as an educator, been a phys ed teacher....and I was going to try really hard not to do anything today because it's Sunday!!!

It is really special to watch a skilled artist at work. Obviously this artist has done thousands of portraits to know how to draw portraits with such great speed. He's using vine charcoal to draw with, if you are wondering. The neat thing about it is that he's able to hold it at varying angles to get the look he wants. With just a swoosh with the side of the charcoal stick, he covers a lot of area for the hair and clothing. He spends the most time on the little girls eyes. Fun to watch! Watch it and then come back and tell me what you thought of it! HERE'S THE LINK

My self portrait in pencil.

I've been meaning to do this for years. Literally, years. Now I have a picture to put on my website, and also to use as user icons in groups and other online places.

It's sort of unnerving to draw yourself. You wonder if you are being too hard on yourself (making yourself too ugly due to self esteem issues) or if you're making yourself look a little TOO good. But turning the paper and the photo upside down did allow me to forget that I was drawing myself, and just concentrate on the shapes.

Darla

How to draw people advice

How to draw people help

"How can I improve my drawing skills, especially drawing people? I have trouble getting the perspective and proportion right."

If you are mainly only having perspective and proportion problems when you draw people, the situation might be that your brain is working against you. What sometimes happens is, you are concentrating so hard on "I'm drawing a person" that it sort of distracts you and intimidates you.
The best advice I can give you is to try to realize when this is happening, and remind yourself to just LOOK FOR SHAPES.

Go for shapes and tonal values, and forget for a few minutes that it's a human being you are drawing. Just pay attention to the shapes and how they relate to each other. Look at each feature separately, concentrate on one at a time.

If you are drawing a person in a live sitting, it might help to start by drawing the outside lines (working the negative space), then work on the features one at a time, in their relationship to each other.

If you are drawing from a photograph, sometimes turning the reference photograph and your drawing paper sideways or upside down can help, because it will force you to just draw the shapes and not be distracted. I find this is especially true if I'm drawing someone I know (including myself!)...we have a pre-existing mental picture of what we 'think' that person looks like, instead of just concentrating on what we really SEE.

The book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (below) by Betty Edwards is an interesting book on this subject.

I hope this has helped!
Darla