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Menu

First, let´s talk about menus. Something that I personally find very painful are menus which don´t look like menus. For example they are images or you have to reveal the menu by clicking on a random graphic. Nothing about this screams "menu" to me. You can still make a great and creative menu that is actually a menu. Make a list, cool buttons, decorate the buttons, make images (images that actually tell you what you are clicking on) and so on. Especially a very cuttered site is very hard to navigate. And if you have no clear menu, it´s even worse. Old webdesign or not, a bad menu is never a great experience.

I´d also personally recommend to make your menu unscrollable. Keep it simple, but at the same time, make it clear and not too tiny in (font-)size. If you have multiple sub pages, either link to them on the related sites, or make drop downs and the like. This is much better to navigate rather than a sidebar with 40 links squished in the corner which you have to scroll through. But most importantly, have a sitemap. Sitemaps are a livesaver and I personally use them a lot on other peoples sites because they are much more easy to use if I wanna find something real quick.- Side note to that: Sitemaps: give them a lttle bit of structure. Specify what´s a main site, what´s a sub site. Play around with margins and font sizes. 50 links underneath each other with no variation are a bad design choice.

Responsive Design

People visit the web on all kinds of devices. Small screens, big screens, tiny screens. Let me tell you that the most annoying thing are websites that are unresponsive. And that goes both ways. A site that is not meant for mobile or a site that looks redicilously large and empty on desktop. Sites on which you can still navigate through, drag your screen around, zoom in and out etc are pretty okay. But if parts are literally cut and unreachable, it becomes a huge problem.

Building a responsive design can be tricky. That´s why frameworks exist too. Use them if you don´t know what you are doing. Your site will become much more compatible with the right styles. (which is what frameworks are, pre build styles/tags). You can also learn a lot from them if you take the styles appart, look up their source codes and so on.

Layout

A nice layout is important. Be creative, go out of your comfort zone. Give it variety. For example, on my about page here you will notice how I don´t keep the same structure for every section I talk about. My interests have a row consisting of 3 containers. My about me at the top has a text box, an image text to it. My identity section is the same but reverse. Making things more dynamic that way. However, it of course depends on your theme. How simple or complex you want it to be. But in any case, a creative layout is always good and yep, often the most difficult to code. But in general I would say trying not to keep your site too "repetitive" is important. You have some textwall on the right? Make your next text wall on the left, put a nice graphic on the other side, a header etc. etc.

Fonts

If you wanna add fancy fonts and have more than 3 lines of text, make sure not only you but others can read it as well. Unless you don´t care about if someone reads your content. Font size as well as line height are very important. I stopped counting how many times I couldn´t read someone's blog, or even just someone's short content warning because the font was 1) completely unreadable, or so painful that it took 4 hours to read a sentece and/or 2) had zero gap between the lines and had letters almost overlapping on top of each other.

Often it´s best to not touch the line height at all and leave it the way it is, instead of messing things up too much. Either use regular fonts or fancy ones which have different widths, heights, can appear quite funky, learn and teach yourself more about web design in this category. For some a little bit of styling is needed in order to make them work.

Graphics/Images

When I first started coding, I wasn´t thinking about that at all, ever. But keep your images small in size. Otherwise it will get pretty awful. Your site might load quick on your end, but probably not for others. My own site is not perfect as well. I have an art and image heavy site after all, but I try to keep things small but still in ok-good quality. The most common issue I see are galleries. Galleries with no thumbnails. CREATE THUMBNAILS (200px x 200px for example) and link to the bigger resolution (in any way you want. The most simple way is opening in a new tab). Don´t let 40 6MB huge images load, even one is bad. I personally try to keep every single graphic under 1MB. Most decor is even just a few kb big. With one exception being the videos.. I can not resize them too much, unless I want a fresh pixel salad.

When you wanna have full background images and no repeating small pattern, make them smaller in size. I personally turn my normal pngs/jpg's into 8bit/10bit etc. graphics. (paint.net has such a feature for example, when you export png) this reduces the file size heavily and doesn't looks too bad. Kinda cool/old in a way.

Cut out your images with care. No random huge stripes or dots flying around because your eraser couldn´t get them. Here is a tip if you struggle with that. Put a white/black extra background color layer behind so you know what it looks like before you export. You can also use the select tool/magic wand to see if there are any spots that shouldn't be there. Also when it comes to graphics either make your own, or find a set of graphics to use. Taking graphics from everywhere on the internet will look all over the place. No style consistency and most likely clutter. I know, gifs are cool but they can be used wrong as well as any other graphic.

General...

The following are tiny "personal prefereces" but I'd still love to mention them as I feel like a lot of these can improve the overall feel of a site.

Dashed borders and Dotted borders are one of these design elements that I feel like don´t work well in a lot of cases. Dashed borders are something I used a ton myself in the past. Especially in combination with intense box shadows. If you want to make regular borders on your boxes, use solid or no color. Or if you wanna be cool, use border images. They are more fancy. But dashed/dotted borders are often pretty off putting, at least to me.

However they can work well for things like dividers.

cool huh?
hm maybe a little less agressive?

As you can see, it looks pretty decent for dividers. Maybe even better if you have a light theme site. As I feel like these often give off a paper-like feel. Like a sketchbook or journal line.

Have a consistend border radius on your site. One box shouldn´t have 40px and the other 4px. A few different sizes can work if done right, but in a lot of cases, it makes the whole page very weird looking. Like someone just threw a bunch of code together from muliple sites. Our local fireworkers report website for example has had this issue. (they redesigned it now but it still looks terrible lol)

Do you have pastel pink text on pastel yellow background? or light blue text on light green background? bad idea. The contrast is simply not high enough here. Not only that but the colors don´t compliment each other as well.. they are biting. I see this issue most commonly with pastel themes but it can also be the other way around. Like this disaster, or this one. You can also use sites like this if you stuggle.

Variety

Variety in art is something I never really thought about in the past. And now it's so important to me. It would even be important to me if I wouldn't share my work online actually. But wait what do I mean with "Variety"?

I want you to look at two different collages I did. (my art is used here for demonstration)

Who I drew there is unimportant. I want you to look at is what the character's on each image are doing. Which collage do you personally think has more variety, 1 or 2?

The first one only has portraits. The second one however features different poses and different level details. Fullbodies, poses, even story telling. Well, not everyone likes to draw the same stuff obviously. Someone might love portraits the most and another person likes drawing stick figures. But let's say you kinda draw similar stuff to what I do. And I definetely see that a lot, I seem to notice a pattern of people being too repetitive, and people who ask for advise on their work often get this tip from me as well. Because trying different things and building a more interesting portfolio is just so much more fun than constantly drawing the character's head facing left or right. You can make a character so much for interesting that way as well. Even if you are bad at poses. It doesn't have to be perfect.

If I start a new piece, my first thought is: "I want it to be unique and cool looking". And when I do that, I don't pressure myself at all with it. It´s more fun than anything else. With something challenging and creative, I know I will like the result and the background behind the artwork A LOT more after, rather than drawing the same face again for the 394759393th time because I don't step out of my comfort zone or put in much effort. If you haven't considered this before, try it out. Perhaps you will be way happier with your work and gallery.

Shading / Rendering

Shading can be a tricky thing. And often, it can even ruin the piece instead of improving it. What you use and how you use specific techniques is what makes bad and good shading. I often see hate on airbrush shading. But in almost all my work is airbrush shading. Did you know that? Airbrush shading can be used wrong, I have seen in thousands of times. Practice makes perfect. The most important thing is knowing how to place it. The most common issue I see when airbrush shading was used is placing the shading too intense and along the outlines of the whole character figure instead of paying attention to the light source. This often gives a dark,dirty look rather than nicely done shadows. The same goes for not making it smooth enough / being too messy with it. Celshading on the other hand is often the more simple, less bad solution for many. I myself use it, but never without the mix of airbrush. Mixed shading techniques is something that really makes my art look good. If I wouldn't do it the way I do it or leave out a few steps, I can say for sure it would look terrible, haha. If you are currious how I go about my work > flat color > airbrush shading > celshading/often more painterly > lighting > highlights/detail > coloring outlines(if any) > filters such as noise/ very gentle gradient on top for perfect mood > done.

Not caring

Huh? not caring? Yea! Most small oppsies aren't important. The stuff you only see when you zoom in to max. (Altought I tend to fix even the tiniest unnecessary detail which is such a annoying habit lol). However things like white spots because the bucket tool hasn`t filled everything, are kinda a thorn in my eye. It takes two seconds to fill that 3 white spots in and it would look so much better too.

Not connecting lines (unless it`s nice and loose on purpose), wobbly lines or overlapping lines which should be ereased. No line variation, no smooth ends. Pretty much any app has a few line settings. You can get a much cooler pen for your lines if you mess around a bit.

Paintings

I wanted to give paintings it`s own section to talk about. Paintings are one of my favorite things to do (for years now) and whenever new peps are trying to paint. I often see the same repeating issues, which I used to do as well.

I´ll use furries here to explain, especially fur is something I see poorly drawn and all over the place very often, humans not so much. So, I want you to look at this old icon from 2016, as well as this little umbreon. These were mainly my beginings with making lineness artwork.

It´s save to say, this is ugly af. At that time, I loved it. Now, I want to scream. The fur just looks flat and has no detail at all. The eyes have no depth and stare at nothing, the shading isn`t right and close to none existing. The shape of the eyes and tongue are wonky and not smooth.

Now I want you to look at this cute chibi one, which has a similar face structure. (crop from a 2022 piece). The texture is there, the shading and depth as well. What I have done different? Practice and patience. Looking to improve my own mistakes, learning from other artworks as well.

This kind of improvement does not happen overnight. Paintings are a very complicated thing to learn, and especially if done messy can end up pretty uneven or flat. But if you got the hang on it, it`s very fun to do. My number one tip for painting fur ( or painting in general) is finding the right brush(es) for it. I personally don't use custom fur brushes. I paint each individual stroke by hand. I simply like it more and can control the fur and flow a lot more. I love using my wet watercolor brush with fade in-out ends which mixes slighly to paint the fur strokes. NO other brush I messed around with ever gave me a better result.

I use pretty much the same technique in human art, or hair and clothing. Working with watercolors. Putting in some depth, contrast and texture. For things like grass. clouds, leaves, I even use custom brushes sometimes and try to let them fit in with the rest. I tend to not use custom brushes too much tho, because it often gives off a copy paste look, which I personally feel like looks very unbalanced and "unfinished".

Often, I´m not too sure how to explain in depth but maybe these few lines of text were cool :'D.