I have been sitting on this post for a while, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to explain what I have been building without it turning into a novel. So here is the short version. Welcome to Keri Rosemond Art, my new home on the internet for everything I’m painting, trying, reviewing, and learning.
The longer version is that this site did not come together in a spare hour here and there. I used an entire staycation to build it, start to finish. No trips, no big plans, just me, my laptop, and a lot of coffee, working through logos, colors, a style guide, and the site itself. If you have ever taken on a project like this, you know it is equal parts fun and exhausting. I loved almost every minute of it.
Designing the Logos
I started with the logo, because everything else needed something to build around. I wanted a mark that felt handmade without looking messy, something that could hold its own on a favicon and still feel personal on a full page header. I landed on a horizontal version for the site header, a stacked vertical version for square spaces like social profiles, and a simplified favicon for browser tabs.
The wordmark pairs a softer script style for my name with a bold, condensed type for ART, which felt like a good match for the whole brand. Personal and warm on one side, confident and a little graphic on the other. That contrast ended up showing up everywhere else too.
Curating the Color Palette
This part took longer than I expected. I knew early on I wanted something that felt like watercolor itself, colors that could bleed into each other without feeling chaotic. I built the palette around four color families, blue, teal, rose, and peach, each with a light, medium, and dark version.
The mediums do most of the heavy lifting, things like buttons and accents. The darks are reserved for places that need weight, like the footer and body text. The lights show up as soft backgrounds and highlights. Getting eleven shades to actually work together, and not just look nice in a swatch grid but hold up across buttons, cards, and text, took a lot of trial and error. I am happy with where it landed.
Creating the Style Guide
Once the logo and colors existed, I needed everything written down in one place before I built a single page, otherwise I knew I would end up making inconsistent choices three pages in and having to backtrack. So I put together a full brand guide. Logo usage and spacing, the full color palette with hex codes, and a type system with dedicated fonts for headings, body copy, and a handwritten style accent I use for pull quotes and little personal touches throughout the site.
Having that guide before I started building the actual pages saved me more time than I expected. Every decision after that point was just, does this match the guide, yes or no.
Building the Website
With the brand locked in, I moved on to the site itself.
Project Gallery
One of my favorite parts of the whole build is the project gallery, where I’ll be sharing paintings and pieces as I finish them. Rather than one long scroll of everything I have ever made, you can filter by things like medium, subject matter, and who or what inspired the piece, so if you only want to see watercolor florals, or you’re curious what I’ve made inspired by a particular artist, you can find it quickly.
Taxonomies for Artists
Related to that, I built out a way to tag pieces by the artist or source that inspired them. So much of what I make starts with something I saw from another artist and wanted to try in my own way, and I wanted that connection to be visible on the site instead of buried in my head. Click on an artist and you’ll be able to see everything tied to them in one place, paintings I made inspired by their work, blog posts where I mention them, and eventually products too, since some of the artists I follow sell their own supplies and I plan to carry those in my shop once it’s built out.
What’s Next
This is just the starting point. I have supply reviews, course reviews, and tutorials in the works, along with a YouTube channel I am slowly building out. Down the road I’ll be opening a shop too, with art supplies I love, including some from the artists I mentioned above, and eventually my own original artwork. My hope is that this becomes a place you actually want to come back to, whether you are looking for something specific or just need a break from your own screen for a few minutes.
Thanks for being here for the very first post. There will be a lot more where this came from.
