Changes coming to the Ralph Art Website Project

As I get ready for the B/W&C show, opening on October 22 (that's less than 2 weeks away!), I've also taken it upon myself to redo the Ralph Art website (http://www.ralphart.com).

This started out just being a re-theming, but as I delved deeper into it, I found myself doing a number of more structural things; things that affect functionality and easy of use AND updating.

I'm moving to a new hosting provider: Namecheap.com - who despite their name provides (so far) excellent inexpensive hosting, name registration, and SSL certs. This appeals to the left-brain me who works as an IT systems analyst 40 hours a week.

Couple of things that I'm adding: using Flickr to host all the gallery images - this should speed up page loads for site visitors; and email updates, should you choose to opt in to that. I'm also using a different template which to my eye is cleaner and easier to navigate.

I'm hoping to have it up before the end of the week. Look for an announcement here and on my Facebook page.

Cheers!

Coming October 22 - B/W&C Group Show at Gallery 414

Update on the show I've organized at Gallery 414.

Show title: B / W & C - Paintings and Photograph by Ron Crouch, Leo Wesson, and Kipp Baker. It will be at Gallery 414, located on the near west side Fort Worth at 414 Templeton, just north of 7th Street and east of University Drive.

The opening will be Saturday, October 22 from 6 to 9 PM and will be up from October 22 through November 20. The gallery will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon until 5 and by appointment during the week.

I don't know how it is that I've become friends with so many photographers - I've known Leo for over 35 years, and Kipp since my days as an undergraduate at TCU (I'll let you do the math there, thank you). Both have done countless favors for me (many but not all of a photographic nature).

I’ll be showing mostly recent paintings with maybe a couple of older, pieces, while Leo and Kipp will be showing photography. In addition to the Gallery 414 website, the 3 of us also have a website up with more information about us and the show, which can be seen at:

http://bwc-artspace.com.

Once we've got the final mix of work for the show we'll most likely feature it on the bwc-artspace.com website, but for now, here's a little taste.

Ralph Art Website relaunched

Woo hoo! The new Ralph Art website is now officially live!  I cut over the DNS for http://www.ralphart.com a little while ago, so now the redesigned site is the one you'll see when you go there.

If you are curious or bored, the old site, with all its warts and poor display on mobile devices, is still visible at http://old.ralphart.com. The last redesign (mostly just a reskinning) took place about 3 years ago (give or take). I'll probably leave it there for a while, for curiosity sake.

The new site has (in my opinion) a much improved organization, with lots of large images of art. For once I did not do the complete redesign myself, instead I started with a template and heavily customized it. This let me create a responsive, mobile device friendly site with a minimum of effort on my part. Yes, I have been known to be lazy.

Leave comments below if you feel so inclined or find a glaring mistake somewhere.

Thanks!

After a prolonged absence...

It's embarrassing to see that the last post on this blog was almost 2 year ago. Sheesh. That is going away NOW.

What's new? Oldest son is back in Texas, after a seven year stay in Toronto. He's now in Austin, working for Whole Foods. Youngest son has one more year at Texas State University. All my once far-flung offspring have returned, only a 3 hour car trip away.

The art? Sigh...

New drawings from the sketchbook series now online

I just updated the Sketchbook page on the Ralph Art website. New images are under the Cats, Children and Interior tabs. Most of these images date back to when John and Edward were very young (1986-1992).

Next: I've got a bunch of new digital photos of works on paper (thanks, Leo!) which I'll be processing over the next month or so. Includes lots of pieces from my ongoing portrait project.

First batch of sketchbook drawings now live

I just uploaded the first batch of sketchbook drawings to the Ralph Art Website. You'll find them under Art > Sketchbooks on the dropdown menu.

So far I've scanned over 70 pages (though not all will be sent to the website). This first lot has 27 images, listed under the categories People, Places, Stuff. The next batch will include Children, Cats and Interiors. Given what I do, that almost covers it.

Since I do these primarily for my own amusement, most of these have never been seen before.

Enjoy!

The Sketchbooks

As if I don't have enough to distract me, I've decided to scan a bunch of my old sketchbooks/drawing pads. Part of this is for a larger project, part of it is so I can post a section on the Ralph Art Website with images from the sketchbooks. Regardless, I currently have about 25 images scanned, corrected and sized. That's probably a third of what I've got.

Of course not all are fit for public display, but there you are. The majority of them are from about 15 - 20 years ago. Below is a sample drawing, done in Glasgow in 1985 at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

New Mobile version of the Ralph Art Blog

I just finished and uploaded a mobile version of the Ralph Art Blog. It started out being an iPhone specific version but I've added additional simplified generic support to other devices as well. Be warned I'm continuing to tinker with it so things may change somewhat. The URL will not change.

If you are viewing with an iPhone, you can save it as a web app -- I've got an icon prepared.

To get to it, go to: http://mobile.ralphart.com

Enjoy!

Coming soon: yet another facelift

It was only last fall that I gave the Ralph Art Website a facelift and I'm thinking about doing it again.

I've gotten a bit tired of the 1930's vibe that originally inspired the look -- primarily the big posterized view on the left side of the content. Initially I thought it looked sort of cool but now...not so much. It's also a big waste of space.

Some pages (primarily the home page) don't play nice with all browsers. The final factor is I want to be able to make it more mobile device friendly (currently looks like hell in my iPhone) which will entail a big cascading stylesheet revision. So it's back to the drawing board.

This time the redesign won't be quite as radical. I've decided I like the header I knocked out for the re-design of the Ralph Art Blog, so that will replace the current header. I'll also make the content area a little wider. Once I've done that I'm planning to make it so it looks better in mobile devices ("cell phones" for those of you who are not forced to use techno-buzz).

The iPhone version of the blog is close to completion (working on that this weekend) and I hope to have the main site done by next weekend.  Unless I'm inspired to paint, and then who knows.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Mailing list for updates

I've set up a mailing list to send out updates about shows, blogposts and the like. If you're interested, send me an email and I'll add your address. If, perchance, you grow weary of hearing about me, just send me another and I'll cheerfully remove it.

For more information, see the updates page on the Ralph Art website.