Hello

[Angel312]

Hello all. My name is Gail, but anything related to my artwork...Angel312 will get my attention. I am 50 yrs old and have been drawing since I can remember, but I never thought of it as anything but"doodling." I remember my first experience with sales was when I was about 8 or 9, and my friend wanted to sell my drawings of the "Flinstones!" Obviously she was the business graduate and I went into psychology. Anyway, that's a little history LOL! I have had a very busy lifestyle with my work, marriage, children, and now 5 grandchildren! About a year ago I injured my back and I found myself bored and thought I would lose my mind if I didn't find a hobby, so I dug out my old graphite pencils and sketchpad. I'm in a lot of pain most often, take meds that make me groggy, and have very poor memory right now. I tried other hobbies like sewing, needlepoint, crocheting, etc... but it seems like work!! Back to the sketch pad I am. I am self taught except for the couple of electives in college to fill in. I've considered myself an amateur all my life and then about 3 yrs ago a friend of mine at work wanted to see my work (i drew for fun for family members, etc..) so I brought it to work. Before you know it I had people asking me to do portraits for themselves and I was amazed! About a year and a half later was when I hurt my back and it was all down hill from there. I was terminated from job because they could not accommodate me and I could not come back to work. I am uninsurable and have a lot of stressors, but my husband, 2 children, and 5 g-children are my life and they are very supportive. I thought about looking for something to keep me busy and I am really attempting to put together a portfolio, and regret all the sketches I did not get copies of!! I also live in Indiana in the US, and our weather is unfavorable often, so I have a hard time getting shots of the work that i have done already, hence I get poor photos with glares of the work I have done as well. That is pretty much my life story LOL! I am blindly stumbling around here, so please be patient with me until I figure out all the whistles and bells! I am really here to meet others with a commonality.. my art, to see the works of others, to pass the long hours, and to possibly get my work posted if I can figure out how to accomplish that. Please remember that I did not grow up with a computer as many young artists have, so it takes me a while to figure things out and I used the computer strictly for work...treatment with mentally ill patients, so I will require some info if possible and it will take a while for me to navigate around. Nonetheless, once I get this all down pat, hopefully I can attain some of my goals mentioned earlier! It's a pleasure to be here and I hope that I'm posting in the right place!! My medium currently is graphite pencil, very occasional acrylic, digital photos, and I would love to dabble in cartoons and pastels.

[smb]

Hi Angel312!

It's good to have you on board at artfreaks.com! Although the site has been going for some time now, there aren't really that many members active in the forums, just yet. But hopefully, that will change and you'll be able to "meet" and interact with plenty of other people who are into art...

Anyway, whilst we are waiting for the membership to gain a sizable and active base, there is no reason why you can't start uploading some of your art. Basically, what you need to do is to click on "My Controls," (the link only shows up when you are logged-in.) Then, in the Menu panel on the left-hand side of the screen, you click on "Invision Gallery / Your Albums."

You will see an error message that says something like "You don't have any albums" Then you just click on where it says "Create your first album"

You will need to give your album a title and a short description.

You will also need to select a category for your album.

Once your album has been created, you will see a little drop-down menu. Click on either "Upload Image," (if you only want to upload a single image) - or "Bulk Upload," if you want to upload up to 10 images at a time. That should present you with a dialogue box where you will be able to select the images that you want to upload from your computer

You can create as many albums as you like and currently, (as of November, 2007,) there are no limits as to the amount of disc space that you can fill-up on my server!!!

Just one little tip...

You will find that if your images are to big, they will take forever to upload - or they will not upload at all... You really need to reduce your image file sizes down to less than 200Kb per image - and physical dimensions of the image should not be much more than about 1,200 X 850 pixels.

Any problems, give me a shout!

P.S., you should try pastels. I absolutely adore working with them!!

[smb]

Just a quick tip...

You'll find if you click on "Add Reply" (at the top of the post,) rather than "Reply" (at the bottom,) you will get a text entry box that does not include a full quote of the post to which you are replying.

The + / - Quote button at the bottom, is supposed to be a toggle switch, (I think?!) but it never seems to work...

Hope this helps

[Angel312]

Thank you so much. Yes it does help!

Gail(angel312)

[FunkyBoy]

Hello all. My name is Gail, but anything related to my artwork...Angel312 will get my attention. I am 50 yrs old and have been drawing since I can remember, but I never thought of it as anything but"doodling." I remember my first experience with sales was when I was about 8 or 9, and my friend wanted to sell my drawings of the "Flinstones!" Obviously she was the business graduate and I went into psychology. Anyway, that's a little history LOL! I have had a very busy lifestyle with my work, marriage, children, and now 5 grandchildren! About a year ago I injured my back and I found myself bored and thought I would lose my mind if I didn't find a hobby, so I dug out my old graphite pencils and sketchpad. I'm in a lot of pain most often, take meds that make me groggy, and have very poor memory right now. I tried other hobbies like sewing, needlepoint, crocheting, etc... but it seems like work!! Back to the sketch pad I am. I am self taught except for the couple of electives in college to fill in. I've considered myself an amateur all my life and then about 3 yrs ago a friend of mine at work wanted to see my work (i drew for fun for family members, etc..) so I brought it to work. Before you know it I had people asking me to do portraits for themselves and I was amazed! About a year and a half later was when I hurt my back and it was all down hill from there. I was terminated from job because they could not accommodate me and I could not come back to work. I am uninsurable and have a lot of stressors, but my husband, 2 children, and 5 g-children are my life and they are very supportive. I thought about looking for something to keep me busy and I am really attempting to put together a portfolio, and regret all the sketches I did not get copies of!! I also live in Indiana in the US, and our weather is unfavorable often, so I have a hard time getting shots of the work that i have done already, hence I get poor photos with glares of the work I have done as well. That is pretty much my life story LOL! I am blindly stumbling around here, so please be patient with me until I figure out all the whistles and bells! I am really here to meet others with a commonality.. my art, to see the works of others, to pass the long hours, and to possibly get my work posted if I can figure out how to accomplish that. Please remember that I did not grow up with a computer as many young artists have, so it takes me a while to figure things out and I used the computer strictly for work...treatment with mentally ill patients, so I will require some info if possible and it will take a while for me to navigate around. Nonetheless, once I get this all down pat, hopefully I can attain some of my goals mentioned earlier! It's a pleasure to be here and I hope that I'm posting in the right place!! My medium currently is graphite pencil, very occasional acrylic, digital photos, and I would love to dabble in cartoons and pastels.

Hey there.

Sucks about all the problems you are having with your back and so on and so forth, but great that you've went back to your arts! I'm going to have to check some of that stuff out, sounds very impressive! so yeah, you seem like quite the interesting person, I'll have a good look at anything you've uploaded, please do the same for me!

Take it easy.

NullBoss.

[gwyn_01]

Hello there, this is gwyn, from the Philippines!!!