Rinir is one of the major characters in an allegory which I wrote during high school, and in order to become more accustomed to what was new with Adobe Photoshop CS4, I chose to do a digital painting portrait of Rinir. Now, granted, I haven’t actually done any digital painting or sketching in quite a while, so a few things are off – namely, her eyes are a tad large and her lips a tad small, but overall I view this piece as a “success”.

The background was actually done in Illustrator; I wanted something kind of mystical, and I think that I accomplished just that.

There was no model used for this picture (I rarely use models to draw), but I have enabled print ordering on the DeviantArt page for this piece (the image in this post links directly to the DeviantArt post – I prefer to add these to my DeviantArt gallery for much easier handling of images, ability to produce prints, as well as networking benefits).

Enjoy!

[edit] For reasons unknown, the image link is currently not showing. Thus, this link should bring you to the image page: View the digital painting

As some know, I always tried to help out where I could at LiveJournal where I could. I even took an official design and coded it into HTML/CSS for them (which was perhaps a highlight of my summer). I also volunteered (and still do, to a point) as a support volunteer for LiveJournal – helping users do things with their account, such as confirm their email address, debug their CSS, et cetera. It was definitely a highlight for me, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Then, LiveJournal was sold yet again, and many of the friends I had made in their San Francisco office were summarily laid off. I do believe I started stepping away from LiveJournal at this time, as I suppose I sensed that things were taking a turn. I worried about the blog. Read more »

So, for the last day, I’ve been working on my blog design.  For some strange and unknown reason, the sidebar had randomly shifted downward – despite me not having changed anything.

Now, I use WordPress, and pride myself at having skills and understanding of the CMS.  My old manager from my last day job taught me much of what he knew about WordPress; the rest I learned through reading and experimenting, and creating new WordPress themes.  I had Dre set up a subdomain on the server where the site is hosted, and WordPress was installed onto it, giving me a place to practice and play with what I saw as a fun, fascinating toy. Read more »

Welcome…  to the new blog of BeLink’d Design!  As you can see, it’s now much easier to mark posts, as well as there is a new, fresh design.

It is definitely important for designers to keep their sites up-to-date.  I personally try to update this site once every few months, and give it a fresh taste/feel in the process.  Our old site was inspired by minimalist designs; this one is more dreamy – a reminder to always reach for the sky, and always work hard to grasp your dreams.  Whether you wish to be an astronaut, a pilot, or something as simple as to be a decent human being, it is important to maintain dreams and work hard so that they become realities.

I am always working hard to maintain my own dreams.  I was lucky enough to be able to reach for them, and grasp what opportunities I could in order to make them a reality.  But at the same time, it is important to not let opportunities go; childhood dreams, though they may seem petty, are one of the most important aspects of growing up.

Thus, dream on!