Preserved Topic: every rose has a thorn...

i finished redesigning my personal site this morning... there are some minor issues with it yet in opera 5.0 (due to transparent bg images -- only on the diary page)
http://www.bittersweet2.com

------
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

I like the background colours!
And I think the rose looks ok, though it has a strange grey colour that I have never seen in a rose before.
The whole design has a nice and clean feel to it
The only thing I really don't like is the font you have used. But then I guess that is just a personal preference...
The black horizontal lines bugs me a little also, but not too bad.

First I'll second ZOX on the rose. Its pretty good PS work but there's just something no quite right about it.

Secondly, there are several of your pages where there is about 4 to 5 pixels of white between the top of your pink nav and the browser window. This offsets your line going across the top of the page next to the rose. Might want to fix that. The pages I saw it on were your "Frontpage is the Devil", Photographs, Videos I Own, Value of Critiquing, Scanned Sketches, and there may be more but I am tired of flipping back and forth. (P.S. I am viewing in IE 6)

That "Any Damn Browser" thing looks tacky compared to the rest of your site. Why not just provide a text link or design your own button for it?

Other than that I have no complaints. The color scheme is good, the text for your content might be a tad darker for easier reading. Its a subtle design that loads quickly and is easy on the eyes.

i dont have ie 6 (unfortunately, various versions of ie cant coexist on the same machine like netscape). i added a height definition to the table rows, does that make it better? there really shouldnt be a difference between the pages, since its all includes.

the mauve (not grey) rose stays. there are many different colors of roses out there (not that ive seen them all).. including purple-black colored ones (which i have seen).

------
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

I think you biggest problem with the rose is the lack of any texture and life.

You obviously have pictures of roses, if not own many your self. You should sit down and stare at several different roses in different lights, and try and get an idea of how the different materials absorb and reflect the light. Place different coloured objects around them and see if that changes how the rose looks, The more you study an object in every little detail, the more likely you are to pull this off well. Then try to create what you actually see, colour by colour, tone by tone, include all the imperfections, all the bits you hate, all the bits you love. If you simply try to create an image of a rose without really studying it first, you wont get a good result.

Remember, a red shirt is not just a red shirt. It is red, it is light red, it is dark red. It is slightly toned the colour of the wall it's next to, it's slightly yellowed due to sunlight, it's slightly faded, ever so slightly more on the shoulder and neck that anywhere else. Always remember the details! that's what really counts!

For example, what you have looks like a rose yes, but the stem alone would not look like a rose stem to most people, and a petal by it self would not look like a rose petal. Therefore, you have created more of a symbolic image and an actual rose. If you follow these steps above, you should get good results.

If you've done this and still can't get anywhere, Here's some quick tips on possibly making you current image a little more realistic.

Their seems to be a shadow missing on the area of the stem that runs into the flower.
Try uping the contrast in the foreground just a bit, and darkening the background areas of the image, especially where the stem trails off. That should give it some more depth.
The shading is nice, except that the stem and the flower seem to have the exact same saturation level??? Changing these a bit could help.
Also, the stem and rose look like their both made of the same material, and they shouldn't be.
Try using a slightly yellowed highlight on the stem instead of the pure white you have used.
There doesn't seem to be quite enough depth in you're shading, try making it a little more extreme.

God dam that was a rant now wasn't it. Well I hope it helps.... Hope I didn't sound offensive, cause I didn't mean too.

Dracusis.

i am not going to criticise your perception of realism (which is good). but art is not always equal to realism. you can still tell that monet painted water lilies, even though they dont realistically look like water lilies.

i could add textures, but it would take away from the rose. you can look at a rose and see that has color, shape, and texture. but what happens if you touch it or smell it? a rose is soft to the touch, velvety. cut roses are cool to the touch as well. the stem is smooth looking, but not smooth to the touch.

to me, making the rose look soft (and maybe even cool, since my chosen color was a cool pink) was more important than making it look real. when i think of a rose, i think of something soft.. not something textured.

btw, the only colors i used were mauve and pale green. highlights and shadings were done with dodge and burn.. not white.

------
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

Fair enough, I can see what you getting at.

All in all though, i still think it look's a little odd. But that's just my opinion.

You Site does look good, but I also noticed the seemingly out of place white squares / rectangles on you pages in NN (Didn't view it in IE), as did kretsminky. But I also say some random or garbled letters in those white boxes.

Appart from that, I think it's great! keep up the good work.

i think ive got that fixed now. theres something wrong with netscape & opera regarding non-repeating backgrounds (which the months & the nav text are) and transparent backgrounds. netscape will fill in the gaps where the bg doesnt fill in the table area with almost anything from another app (minimize the browser, pull up a text editor with a bunch of text, then bring up the browser.. you can see the text there from the text editor). sometimes you get black squares. ive had some bgs just plain not show up in netscape because they were transparent.

------
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned