Website Update and Printer Suggestions

Nothing dramatic on the surface of it but I mad a few changes to the construction on my website that will hopefully make updates in the future a little easier. I did a bit of culling of some of the pieces as well to make room for more recent pics. I have a feeling, though, that a full scale revamp is in order pretty soon. Maybe later in July when a few other things going on right now settle down.
I have a question for anybody out there who has done any printing with an online printer. Any favorites or absolute dogs you've dealt with? I'll likely be giving up my printer at home and begin using the online printers much more often pretty soon.
Thanks

Fishlips

A new piece I just wrapped up to use as a postcard mailer shortly. Any comments or critiques on it are welcome before I send it out to everyone and their pet turtle.

edit- I made a few changes based on some feedback I got on the SCBWI forums.

A new place to see what ddraws

Signed up with childrensillustrators.com to show my work there. There are a LOT of incredibly talented people there so go and have a look around.

Rockin Pinatas (in progress)

Here's a current piece in progress. Hopefully by the time this is ready to send out as a Spring mailer, Spring will have actually arrived!

ocean and desert

A pair of recent additions to my portfolio over at www.ddraws.com.

Painter pot holes

I just ordered my Painter 10 upgrade. Now with that said, I just have to vent a little and say I can't wait for a service update to the program! Its got some nasty bugs.
It slows to a crawl sometimes for no reason that I can tell. The files sometimes appear scrambled while saving but then go back to displaying normal after a second or two. I don't know why it is creating duplicate files with _bak added to the file names. And so on.
Those are really my only big gripes I can think of right now. The slowdown is incredibly frustrating though. This version was touted as being speedier all around.
Well as soon as I finish up the current projects this week I will have to search around for some trouble shooting tips online. Maybe there is some simple remedy I haven't dug up yet.

Playin with Painter

Been playing around with Painter 10 recently. I haven't delved too deeply yet but so far I quite like the new RealBristle Brushes. The video demo that they had on the Corel website doesn't really show do it justice though. I certainly wasn't impressed by just the video anyway, but after downloading the trial and playing with it for a while I think the new brushes are great step up for the program.
I am a far cry from a color correction guru but I am looking forward to seeing how the new color accuracy features work out in this version. I was never happy with color correcting in Painter 9 and always had to take my work to Photoshop for the final CMYK output. This may all be due to my own deficiencies and maybe Painter has had the capabilities all along. Ah well, I'll see how things go with a few pieces.
There is another program I'e become a pretty big fan of, ArtRage. Some of its brushes are simply fantastic and I haven't found anything in Painter yet to compare (very well could be in there, Painter does have a deeeeeep toolset after all) ArtRage is still a little underfeatured for most of my work but I am having a good time developing a workflow going back and forth between Painter and ArtRage. ArtRage is only $20 so any digital artists out there should definitely give it a good look. It has a lot of room to grow but I am really happy to see a program like it avialable for so little cost.
OK enough of the advertisements.

Walking into a room

Well, I've just spent the past few days recovering from my trip to NY and the fantastic SCBWI Winter Conference. The winter storm that passed through had me cooped up in the Cleveland Airport for a day but I am finally home and can now begin the process of putting what I've learned into practice.
I didn't have the good fortune to just happen to sit next to any art directors or editors (at least that I know of, they could have been using a false identity for all I know). I did sit at a table that was eventually joined by almost all Canadian writers. That was fun. I brought far too few business cards and ran out before the Art show (which was great) was finished. Ah well. I met up with a few other artists from my rep's group and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I can't stress enough how good it is to get out and meet the people you've been talking to and working with through the great digital divide.

This will have to suffice as a first post. It's time to start making up some content to justify a second post.