Susan Typert, Pastel Artist

 
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The Website

This website was designed to be quite minimal and to the point with the main focus on the galleries of artwork. We decided to go with a purple, red and blue colour scheme as they are prominent colours in many of Susan’s pieces and reflect the vibrant and bold feelings Susan strives for.

For the photographic banners we decided to take some shots with a macro lens to capture the pastel strokes on the paintings as well as the grain in the pastel sticks. We wanted to show glimpses into the process of creating a pastel painting with the watercolour for the underpainting, pulling out the pastels that will be used for the piece, and actually painting with them.

The Gallery

The goals of the photo gallery was to:

  • Allow for modular stacking so there wouldn’t be awkward spaces throughout the page

  • Allow for a lightbox overlay when an image is clicked for a larger shot

  • Have a space for the titles and descriptions of each piece

  • Have a simple design so as not to take away from the work

  • Has to be user-friendly so Susan can update the work on her own

We went with just a slight outline around the image and descriptions to give visual distinctions between each element. The images are self-stacking and will move around to adjust to a screen width change. This module is very easy to use where, in the backend, Susan can drag her images in, write their titles and descriptions, and save the changes. There is also an option to optimize the images.

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Concept

Susan Typert is an award winning Master Pastelist from Canada. Her paintings are bold and vibrant and have an excellent way of capturing the emotion of the subject in the painting. This needed to be conveyed in her website through the use of vibrant colour and large, detailed imagery.

Objective

  • Create a web colour scheme that reflects Susan’s paintings

  • Develop a visual oriented website to promote Susan’s work and exhibitions

  • Do a photoshoot to get imagery for the website such as elements from her studio, works in progress, and finished paintings

Considerations

The primary demographic for Susan’s website are other artists and art buyers. These people are generally women and 40+ years old.

With this in mind, some design focuses were:

  • Keeping the website visual and engaging with lots of imagery

  • Having all information accessible from each page

  • Ensuring the information is to the point and that the web elements do not overshadow the artwork