Finally I have some work.

I have some work finally. After the long dry spell I expanded my search to people I know who have their own business. I am doing a website for a martial arts school I attend, and I'm doing it as a pro-bono exercise to build my portfolio.
The client doesn't know much about the web but knows he needs a web site to keep up with his peers in the industry. So far, I've made some graphics, converted his logo to something that can be used on the web, and started a template.
I need to make sure I don't dilly dally on this and put something professional together soon and get it up and running so he doesn't lose interest in the project.

That's it for now.

Huge dry spell.

I'm still having no luck landing a new project. That one failed project seems to be haunting me, and the lack of examples seems to be a theme as well. I've put up a temporary website with some of my work but that hasn't helped. I think I need to take a step back, finish my website and perhaps even making it permanent before continuing. I need to focus on one thing right now, as time seems to be coming at a premium.

Creating my own graphics.

I am not an artist. My talent for creating good looking pictures is almost non-existent. Add to that the fact that good graphics programs are supposed to be expensive and hard to figure out and creating your own web graphics/logos/banners can seem like a daunting task for someone like me.

That was until I discovered Paint .Net. Let me start out by saying that I am becoming a big fan of Open Source software. I've played around with Linux, Open Office, GIMP, and a few other open source software products. Mostly my experience has been one of great surprise as I have found quality software that rivals the big software companies products in quality and usability and well supported due to a large user following who like to share their knowledge.

Paint .Net is one of these programs, the software is easy to use, has a great forum with guru's posting answers and challenging each other to come up with new ways to out do each other in plug ins and tutorials. Using the software and the additional knowledge from the forums I have been able to come up with some pretty decent graphics to use on my site. I'm still not a graphic designer, but I can complete some simple tasks that help make a drab web page look a lot better.