Forest Path near Spandau, Carl Blechen
On Google Art Project. Hi-res downloadable version on Wikimedia Commons. Original is in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Blechen gives his forest scene a wonderfully theatrical character of light, without losing the naturalistic feeling of a forest interior after a rain.
Jay Looming, aka Silvae wrote in his blog about Carl Blechen. Google may help to translate. http://loomings-jay.blogspot.nl/2010/07/carl-blechen.html
I love your site and am very grateful for it. Now I will complain. I don’t enjoy this new layout. For a site devoted to visual imagery why is so much real estate given to the side bar of categories taking up half a page? Why would I want that noise when trying to focus on the beautiful art. Please move the images back to front center and make them even larger if you can.
More specifically. My suggestion would be to merge the two info columns on the right in to one. Have a short intro on top. Followed by the ads. All other info mush- search box, categories etc, beneath that. This frees up space to make the artwork two thirds of the space. Personally I would also put that long info column on the left similar to Gurney’s setup this way the eye travels across the page and ends in the art not info.
Thanks, Joe. I appreciate the feedback.
There are reasons for some of the layout choices that are not obvious from the outside.
I considered making the images larger, but decided against it because of several factors. One is that many of the source images that I have access to for some artists are too small to show them larger. The size was chosen originally as a compromise between that and being “large enough”. I know other blogs and websites show images much larger, but they don’t exactly share my range of topics. Another factor is that I have a backlog of almost 3,000 past posts, the images for which would not fit a new column width without looking out of place. Given the number of images, and my current preference for showing multiple images per post, file size and page loading becomes a factor in image width as well.
The images I post are meant more to be examples — an introduction to an artist’s work — than destination images in themselves. There are always links given in the posts, with the intention that readers will follow them to view more and larger images by a given artist. I often put as much work into gathering and arranging the links as I put into the post itself (sometimes more).
Within the limitation of the image width I chose, I have room to create two supplementary columns, and use them to bring to the top of the page both the ads (that generate most of what little revenue I receive for the work I put in on Lines and Colors) and the introduction and navigation for new readers.
As I work with the new design, which is still a work in progress, I may well take your initial suggestion to revert back to the article center format. The amount of space devoted to articles and side column material is the same as it was in the previous design, it just seems that grouping the supplementary columns makes it look like more space is being given to them.
Another factor, though, is that the new design is also “responsive” and changes according to what hind of device is being used to access it. On an iPad, for example, the right hand columns stack under each other in much the manner you describe. (There are still display issues with images at handheld size, however — as I mentioned, it’s a work in progress.)
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I’m still working out these issues, and it’s helpful to me to know how the design is being received.
See Muddy colors for the same concept of art at two thirds, to one third info column ratio.
Wow, just a beautiful painting. I remember your previous post on Blechen who is new to me, but as sometimes, I don’t always have the time to follow every link in every post, though I wish I did.
This time, especially with this painting I went to the links and more of his work. I am a fan of his now.
Thanks Charley.
Blechen died of a calenture (hitziges Fieber) when he was shy of his 42nd birthday on July 23, 1840. There was probably a heatwave in Berlin then.
I have fond memories of Berlin when it was still divided and dangerous (@Checkpoint Charlie – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkpoint_Charlie).
Wow, that is gorgeous. While it’s of very far away, it reminds me of being on Jekyll or Cumberland, but deeper, and darker.
Thanks for Blechen’s ‘Waldweg in Spandau’ – seldom shown with these details. And thanks for mentioning my blog SILVAE.
