New website

couple of thoughts to start with. i like the general look and feel. i like the colors.

i'm not a fan of splash pages. even static ones. it's just one more click to force a user through. especially repeat visitors. it becomes annoying not to start on the home page.

and if you decide to keep it, it probably needs to be smaller. i'm running on a 20" monitor at 1680x1050, and i don't see the whole image. i don't maximize my browser window. right now this is what i see when i click on the properties of your splash image: 931px × 728px (scaled to 990px × 870px). so two issues, one, it's too tall. second, you're not showing it at it's actual size (and you're scaling it up). i wouldn't make anything taller than 600 pixels, max.

along the same lines, your meaningful content probably starts a little further down the browser window than it could. dunno how i'd adjust, and it may not be fixable with this design. but your menu is ~250 pixels down and your first heading is ~350 pixels down. this is a much smaller issue, though, and not a big deal.

minor nitpicky thing (that i see w/a lot of portfolios, btw). i'd put your navigation (previous/next) *above* the portfolio piece. since every portfolio piece is a different height, that means navigation below moves up/down with each portfolio piece. if it's above, it's always in the same place. that means your user doesn't have to move their cursor around to navigate.

i'm mildly uncomfortable with the white background for the portfolio on top of the pale yellow. any reason you don't have them on the yellow? if you want to keep the white, maybe you could frame out white area so it doesn't just look "plopped" on there. it's just an odd transition and feels a little sloppy.

the word "art" in your navigation is a different font than the rest of the nav, and it doesn't seem purposeful, looks like a mistake. there's also no background on that page, the only one missing it.

there is some white artifacting around the border of your page section, where it overlaps the texture. it's especially evident in the darker colors (like the red of the inspiration pages). also on the inspiration page and the art page, you have the bottom point of the background showing up at the bottom again. it doesn't seem to do that on other pages.

as i said, i like the overall look, i think there are just some details to take care of. plus the general concept of the splash page. i think you need to decide what that's accomplishing and whether that's important enough to push every user to it every time they come to the site before they get to your content.

Some of the backgrounds, like the one posted, are a little bright, I'd like to see a version with the foreground and background colors swapped, just for curiosity's sake. I like the darker ones better, but the black one may be too dark

I love the designs on each page though, almost reminds me of my Window trim that I'm working on.

The bird anatomy design made me laugh, but it's kind of morbid at the same time, I'm not sure which way I'd call that one.

I agree with gwells about the screen size and the white background on your portfolio. As long as your portfolio images stay the same size, the nav button position shouldn't be an issue.

Don't get me wrong. I love the design.

However, the green background has elicited from my monitor a bombardment of gamma rays which were sent directly into my ocular orbs where they are still burning their way into my retinas.

All kidding aside, I really am in a bit of pain here. Could you calibrate your monitor and perhaps try another, gentler shade?

I think that particular green works best in small doses.

Cheers.

Great critique by gwells, very thorough. I agree with what he said particularly about the splash page.

As for the artifacting he mentioned, maybe it would help if you added a mat color similar to the background when you save for web in Photoshop .

Check your spelling, schweetie. I noticed "ice cream pallor" (should be parlor) so there may be other mistakes. Sorry, I'm not good at technical advice on Web sites, but generally, I think it's fun and navigates fast for me. Just thought I should mention, though, that your splash screen comes up looking like this on my 23" monitor (Safari/Mac OS):

Mara
ps: The right edge got cut off when I uploaded the pic. The bird part is centered on my screen at the top, surrounded by that vast sea of pea-green/yellow.

I didn't have time to look through it, but the images look nice but bitmapped.

when i looked through some of the "inspiration" and "art" pages, the whole page had to re-load every time a new image came up and sometimes it got a bit distracting... have you tried iFrames in Dreamweaver? it might help with the consistency of the nav arrows too as everything else on the page would stay the same...

also, i noticed some of the edges on background shapes didn't really blend smoothly with the background, or they were very pixelated..
-good luck, i hope this helps