Really Really Behind

So I have  been horrible about posting. I had a great plan that I was not great on the follow through. I will change that.

I just wanted to post the final form my final project took and then I’ll move on to talking about my new internship at the Smithsonian. I was planning on making a weekly post, but I will just do one big on and then try to continue weekly from there. That post will be coming shortly.

Here is my final project. I of course feel there are some tweaks, but nothing major. I will do those as I see them.
I really loved creating a website and do plan and have some outlines of future ones. Keep following for more on that.

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There will no longer be posts added after this to the Clio II page, but look in My Adventures for the next posts on my internship, art, and websites.

Last Day of Class

So yesterday was the last class for Clio II: History in New Media. It was sad, this was an amazing class. I learned a lot and met some amazing students that have been great influences. Dr. Petrik was an amazing professor, the Art Historians have all heard horror stories of the Clio classes and the difficulty and isolation Art History students felt. But Dr. Petrik, with a background in design really made the class much more relatable. Unfortunately for future Art History students, Dr. Petrik will not be available to teach them as she is retiring after this semester.

I wish Dr. Petrik all the best in her endeavors after retirement and I look forward to reading her book!

I’ll make one more post under the Clio II category with my completed final project. However I have taken to enjoy blogging and I think I will keep up with blogging my next adventure.

Final Project Part 3

So right after last class I began to fix everything I was  told from the critique. Since then I have not really worked on it again since I had to finish a paper before the start of my Comprehensive Exam. Which at this point is still horrifyingly stressful and scary. Once comps are done, I intend to finish working on the site adding in pop-up images onto some of the pages.

 

 

I posted on Danielle‘s blog

Final Project Part 2

Well this week has been full of panicking and getting extremely frustrated over my ideas and the code not doing the same thing and worrying over the simplicity of the site. I like simplicity but fear this one is boring. So there were a lot of late nights some of which were just panicked brainstorming.

All that aside, I have added a dropdown aspect to my navigation bar. I am also considering shifting the way I arrange my analysis on the site. Separating it by artwork rather than keeping it all together. I also added a contact widget. I do plan on attempting to add popups to many of the images with the site.

On a side note I looked at a website on Edmonia Lewis and found it was really boring in its design and not very accessible visually.

Here is my site so far.

Design Project

For the design project I got the basics all ready for todays class. However for the final project I still have a variety of decisions to make. One of which is whether to include a form of interactivity. I was thinking about trying to make it so that if you click on an image and it then pops up in a window within the page. So basically take a thumbnail and it expands and becomes bigger and one can exit out and still be on the same webpage. I don’t know if I have the skill set for that.

I also am considering placing “(Figure 1)” and having it link to a gallery page with all the images. I’m not certain about this yet though.

Here is my design project.

I commented on Annie‘s blog.

http://anniemakar.typepad.com/blog/2016/04/meltdown-pt-1.html

Final Project

Trying to get this final project off the ground is a bit daunting. I’m concerned about how text heavy my site it and that it will be overwhelming. Hopefully it will work out. After reading about making websites easier for those with disabilities I want to attempt to make my site a bit easier for those with visual impairments to read. As someone that grew up with a visually impaired parent I understand the desire for accessing the same things as before. I’m considering making the text a bit bigger and with larger line-spacing as well as breaking it up a bit.

On a side note, I was reading Jenna’s blog about interactive aspects on a site, I’m not so certain about how that would work with my site. I don’t know if I need it really. But learning how to do it would be awesome.

Still working on things, so we’ll see how everything goes.

I commented on Josh’s  and Jenna’s blogs.

Image Project

This project definitely helped me become much more proficient in the use of Photoshop. I really loved coloring, creating, and editing images for my site and found it fun. Unfortunately it is also time consuming and was hard to want to do my other classes homework.

I am okay with the way my Image Assignment turned out, I have a few things I feel aren’t quite right, but I was frustrated and needed to move on. Perhaps later I can go back and work on some more. Such as the layout of the images.

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I haven’t gotten too all of the readings yet but I am finding the ones I have read useful and interesting. I think it is important to consider disabled users needs for websites as they do account of a chunk of our web traffic.

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I commented on Danielle‘s blog.

Photoshop Part 2

So this week I focused on then engraving and vignetted photographs. After getting extremely frustrated with the engraving task I finally got it to work and I am quite satisfied with my outcome.

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As an art historian visual evidence is a major part of my research. The various editing techniques we have learned must be used sparingly and with the right notations and intentions otherwise one may loose the very backing the evidence  was supposed to give. Colorizing can be fun, but should be used cautiously in regards to research.

Something that was brought up last week in class that I want to address is the use of partial images. Sometimes all that one has is partial drawings or photographs of someone of something. It was asked how much one can restore a photograph. I think that as far as using an image as evidence the only restoration we can do is cleaning up scratches or spots. If there are chunks missing either do not use that image or use the information you have within the image and later if other documents are found that may change an interpretation, go from there. In art history we are not always lucky enough to find completely whole wall engravings or paintings, but if we were to add or complete what appears to be a missing line we are misrepresenting the information we have. Sometimes that means if further scientific advances allow for more details to be uncovered interpretations may change. Otherwise the interpretation and analysis is done with as much of the image as one has.

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I commented on Theanna‘s and Annie‘s blogs.

 

 

Photoshop

So I started the Image project last before last weeks class. I was doing quite well with the coloring of a photograph so I thought “why not try engraving?” Well that felt a bit overwhelming reading over the tutorial. I decided to wait until class tomorrow.

So far I’m finishing up the hand-colored photograph and finished with the cropped and resized image. I tried a vignetted photograph but something went wrong so I’ll try that again tomorrow. I really enjoyed hand-coloring a photograph it’s definitely up my ally. A down side is that it is super time consuming and I started getting distracted by the need to do other homework.

Here is what I have so far in the coloring:

     

I only have a few more areas to do. The background is giving me a lot of trouble because I’m not sure what she is in front of.

 

I commented on Alecia‘s blog.

 

Photos and Illustration

I read Chapter 9 of White Space is Not Your Enemy “Adding Visual Appeal: Working with Photos & Illustrations.” This chapter was super awesome and got me really excited about using illustrations in my web page. However that is something I don’t really know how to do so I guess my ideas may get a bit ahead of my ability!

Errol Morris’s “Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock” was extremely interesting. As an art historian I understand that art and artists can make art that is just more than something to look at. Art can be something beautiful to look at, art can be symbolic, and art can be propaganda. Sometimes the propaganda is intended by the artist sometimes it is taken and used by others, but regardless art is not created within a vacuum. Photography is a big part of this, when we look at a photograph we think it is telling the truth, the whole story, and is frozen in time. However just like a painting the photographer has the ability to control what is or is not in the frame and what is happening in a scene. Even if fancy photoshop tools weren’t being used, editing was occurring in some form. It was the interview in Part 2 and Part 3 with James Curtis that was really interesting in regards to exploring the style and authenticity of the F.S.A photography from an art historians perspective. I think ignoring the details behind the art can limit the perspective of the photograph or painting as a useful source for history.

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I started with the Lynda Video’s but I haven’t done much work in photoshop. I do need to do more. I’m trying to get a bunch of it finished by tomorrow before class.

I commented on Mark and Rebecca‘s blogs.