Articles & Texticles

Lines and Colors is a continually intriguing doorway into the websites of artists and illustrators, paraded before you in no particular order by Charley Parker.

Use the link on the sidebar to your left or just click here.

Charlie says:

lines and colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

I’ve never known Lines & Colors to come up with a mediocre or a lazy link. Charley always presents somebody interesting, or a novel insight into a known painter’s work.

What rubs off on me is a genuinely positive outlook and an enthusiastically fresh attitude to all the diverse artist websites that he so succinctly reviews. Always intelligent, never too wordy, and (this is the hard bit) always there every day.

I’ve also always appreciated his short reviews about the usability (or lack thereof) of the sites being discussed.

Now it seems, that after all the tactfully phrased critiques of the hundreds of quirky, awkward and downright aggravating examples of insultingly poor usability that he’s come across on a daily basis over the last twelve or thirteen years, he’s finally lost it.

He’s letting rip! He’s boiling over! He’s incandescent with unbridled rage against all the quirkiness, the-catch-me-if-you-can cleverness of all these appallingly self indulgent, (& let it be said: Narcissistic) mirrors to their creators “visions”.

In short, Charley has “gone off on one“.

I love it! Go Charley, Go!

As a researcher myself, I’m deeply sympathetic to his idea that Artists do not want their websites to be seen
Choice among his pieces of advice to artists who want to irritate their potential buyers and employers is:

Use a “free” hosting service that only charges by making your site display pop-up ads.

Don’t take the trouble to get a domain name.

Use tiny, square thumbnails with a nondescript crop from some obscure corner of the artwork.

Don’t learn anything about usability, information design or good navigation practices.

And best of all, if only because I find it the most irredeemably annoying way of showing images without allowing anybody to actually enjoy them:
Most importantly, make sure the images themselves are too small to really convey any feeling for your work.

Whoops! It’s a subject so close to my heart that I’m beginning to get into rant mode myself….
Calm, Michael, Calm….
Go and read the article. and if you are the author of one of these notoriously irritating websites: Watch Out! Charley Parker has his eyes on you, and he’s sore: Mighty sore!