So, There were a lot of things I considered and that I had in mind when I made this new site. First and foremost, I want a slick, modern gallery with AJAX loading and permalinks, so you could bookmark or email your favorites. Also, I realized people want thumbnails, so that was important. And I needed it all to be easy to maintain, so I could spend more time making the art than updating it. After a lot of work, I was able to get all of that.
Next came the questions, though. The biggest of which was: how big do I make the images? I wanted them to be as big as possible, because art is better bigger. Simple fact. But, I didn’t want them bigger than the smallest average monitor’s height. It’s no good if you can’t see the whole piece in the window at one time, you know? So, I eventually settled on the size I’ve been using since this version of the site launched, and for that it’s a good compromise. But, at the current size, the nature of my paint handling becomes lost. Small details in photographs disappear. It was a working compromise, but not a good one.
So, this morning, I launched an updated viewer that now lets you mouse over an image to get a detail loupe. While a loupe also has its own compromises, I tried to alleviate those as much as I could by making it a really big loupe, almost the same size as the base image. This lets you see huge stretches of detail at a time, so you can get right in and enjoy the work the way I did when I was making it.
The catch here is a few paintings weren’t shot large enough to support the new viewer, and will need reshot before they go back up. So, a couple pieces are missing. Also, none of the lithos were shot with this in mind, so, they too will come back up later once I can reshoot them. Most of the paintings, though, The Great Chicken Skull Revival, The Gods Watch Over Us, and the ChickenBones illustrations are all updated as of now. Go, experience them properly now.
