At long last, my freelance site is officially open!

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…that’s not to say it’s “done.” Your business is never “done” growing or improving. I already have an entire Trello board dedicated to not only maintenance tasks but also things I want to try, add, or tweak. It’s a never ending work in progress.

But long story short, I’m ready to offer my services in freelance web design, web hosting, graphic design, and illustration! I specialize in farms and ranches, but I can provide a great website at affordable prices in a wide variety of industries.

Whether you need a new website, a redesign of your current website, logo design, or even single-use illustrations, I have a broad set of affordable services I can offer you.

You can see some of my web design work at the new website and my illustrations there or on my Facebook page. If you want to talk about your needs, get in touch with me at hello@smokielee.com or over at my website.

So if you’re in need of a web designer or an illustrator, feel free to pop over there and see my work. I look forward to hearing from you!

Link Would Totally Carry a Tom Bihn Bag

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So for my birthday recently I got a Tom Bihn bag, a Pilot. I’m going to write a longer post about it and other Tom Bihn purchases later, but the last time I ordered from them I requested a sketch of something and promised that I would draw them something back. They drew me a sweet fucking T-rex with a wizard hat, which was hard to beat, I admit. The husband has been playing a lot of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and watching just how much shit is in your inventory, it occurred to me that Link could only carry one brand of bag. Then the rest of the sketch was easy.

Overwatch: McCree

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So I participated in the stress test and the open beta for Overwatch. I might be addicted. I spent way too many late nights and hours blowing shit up with Junkrat, flying around like a lunatic with Pharah, and zooming through enemy fire with Mercy. HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER.

Ahem. Anyway, my friends and I are all jonesing super bad since it doesn’t release until May 24, so I drew McCree, one of the heroes, for my husband. He wanted a graphite drawing, and I chose the cover of McCree’s comic as I thought it was a great image. Turns out that doing graphite shading when the original is shaded with watercolor-esque is fucking hard.

This is one of the only drawings I’ve ever done that I like; that just doesn’t fucking happen. Next up: Junkrat!

Tools used: Bristol paper, graphite pencils

Stuff I Did 12/7-12/15

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It was my week off of school, so there’ve been just a flurry of real life things going on like burning, holiday stuff, animal things, and birthdays. Oh well, just means I have less to type!

  • 12 Days of CSS-mas: I started a new self-imposed challenge which I call the “12 Days of CSS-mas.”
  • Day 1: Partridge in a Pear Tree (my site) (CodePen)
  • Day 2: Two Turtle Doves (my site) (CodePen)
  • Day 3: Three French Hens (my site) (CodePen)
  • Day 4: Four Calling Birds (my site) (CodePen)
  • Also posted my first post on my CodePen blog! It’s the same as the post here on my personal blog, but I figured that most people won’t want to go to both places, so it might be beneficial to cross-post. It wasn’t that much work…at least one time…starting to overthink…
  • Drew a little picture of my daughter for my mom’s birthday.
  • Worked on a job application for Trello which involves debugging and hacking a piece of buggy code. After I completed the challenge, I realized that the job is one of the few they have that are not remote, so I ultimately didn’t apply to it. My time was well-spent though, and I learned a few things about Javascript that I previously hadn’t known. Honestly, why isn’t debugging the way we learn all programming? It’s more effective for me than trying to make a program do something the right way around…
  • Updated my About Me page with a timeline visually inspired by something I saw on PatternTap and forked from my Codevember entry. Idea shamelessly adapted from the amazing historical pages of Chris Coyier and Aaron Draplin.
  • Received my Verizon exclusive Google cardboard headset! Last ones in town. FUCK YEAH!
  • Started my newest term in school on 12/14. I am going to attempt to write about my struggles with class every Sunday. If only I had Reddit-like votes to encourage me…hey that’s a great WordPress plugin idea…
  • Talked to my best friend for a couple of hours this weekend! First time in a long time we’ve talked on the phone. He just released a tabletop game about learning about your friends called Treehouse Dreams; it’s on my list of things to get after the craziness of the holidays has dissipated. You can also check out some other games he’s working on.
  • Playing quite a bit of WoW this week. Not because I particularly enjoy Warlords of Draenor (I don’t) but because I like old content. Which is all we have…hahahaha…
  • Watched the season finale of Doctor Who. I didn’t like Clara’s death in The Raven (I’m apparently in the minority on that one) so I really enjoyed this particular episode…right up until they had Me and Clara go triapsing off across the galaxy. I could spend hours talking about why, but I won’t bore people without being asked. Maybe I’ll make a big post about it so I can really rile up the interwebs…

Mom’s birthday present 2015: the bratface

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This year, money’s a little tighter than normal so I had to get creative with my gift-giving. Literally.

I drew a picture of my daughter for my mother for her birthday. I tried to choose a photo that really shows off the kid’s personality (she’s making a face…) while also being a photo she doesn’t have. I think I did pretty well, although I think the chest and sleeves could use a bit more work. However, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out overall, and it’s nice to give something you made to your family!

Final version large:

Final version
Final version

Drawing a picture of the kiddo for my mother. This is about 60% done. I’ll post and updated version one it’s all complete!

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