I know – duh.

The main reasons I keep going are that I just want to prove to myself I can do it, and I want something that I can control. So if I need to add a new gallery, or change some text, I don’t need to hound someone else to do it. I only need to hound myself – which is already hard enough.

The next hurdle is WordPress – I installed it and am somewhat hypnotized with all this PHP stuff. It’s hard to believe that all those weird words and symbols actually mean something, and that there are people who understand it.

And here I am, still fumbling through CSS.

Clearly there are plenty of people who have figured out all this stuff, and I like to think that I’m reasonably intelligent. The goal is to get this thing up in July. And if I haven’t hurled my computer out the window by then, I will move on to re-energizing my personal website, and finally – the Big Kahuna – redesigning my photography site.

First is was the flower, then the rings. Now it’s these circle people. I made this illustration to use as the banner for my website, and I have to say, I’m really digging it. It looks exactly how I envisioned it. I might toy with the colors, make the rays a little wider, but overall I’m happy with the look.

I’m starting to get the hang of this Illustrator thing. It’s still a struggle, and things like this take me a long time. But all I can say is that layers and clipping masks are wonderful things.

One banner down, a whole website left to go!

I’ve been using The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Wow! Book, and just making it through the first couple chapters has made me look at illustration in a whole new way. Rather than seeing things in terms of complicated lines and patterns, I am learning to see things as a combination of shapes. (Don’t laugh at me, all you art majors!)

For example, the flower in my Project Blended logo is made of only two shapes that are copied and combined to form a flower. After some gradient fill and different layering styles – voilà! A nice, geometric flower.

I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with the flower, but for now it’s good enough to go on the promotional postcard I want to make for this project.

I’ve also started reading my 1000 page Dreamweaver book so that I can at least get a basic web page up. I see things like XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, FTP, PHP, ASP, XML, ActionScript, Spry . . . and I feel my stomach turning. Maybe I’m too old to learn how to design websites.

But I trust in the good people who published this book and I’m determined to plow through it. And after Dreamweaver, it’s on to Flash!