No AI was used in any research, creative decisions or editing decisions that went into the writing of the following:
How do I name my pictures? Initially, when I started drawing digitally, I
just came up with a title and hoped it would be a good enough original title for each one. Unfortunately I'm
not a person who did very well with that.
I started struggling after a while, it slowed me down, I am spending however long thinking of a title that
should have taken me seconds to type in and then move on from to the next picture.
In fact, I started struggling fairly early on, it became a problem. I just kept doing it for years and years and years,
until some years ago, when I just said, I can't do it this way. I cannot keep coming up with enough titles
and file names, I can not afford to spend an extra several minutes a picture
just on a name that will never matter to anyone when the whole reason I am even titling the picture is that I'm
required by the computer to give it an actual (file) name, before I can save it. And that's why I'm doing this
rather than just leaving them nameless.
What I finally started doing was saying, I need to take a minute, just put, essentially a bar-code down.
And something to do with how many pictures a of that type, or
just how many pictures I've done that day.
That simple. It eliminated a lot of problems, and a lot of wasted time for me as an artist.
When I make a decision about how to name a piece, because it's going to receive the honor of being on
one of my Cafepress lines, or it's going to end up in
a situation where I'm doing something else with it. Regardless of what that something might be, that's
when I will take a moment and give it a little bit more of a name.
So how I decide on those names then is often through inspiration, sometimes I just have something in
mind. Sometimes I will have to take a few minutes and look at it and give it its due consideration
that can turn easily into more of a personal process than I'm gonna go into here.
This is definitely something I wish I had thought to do sooner because my brain is not wired to do as much
verbally as visually so understandably when I am looking to find one of my pictures I am not even looking at
the title I am looking at the thumbnail. That does not mean I want to leave complete gibberish where
the names are, it just means that trying to think of words to go with the picture every picture has been
something that wastes a lot of time and energy, and never got easier (and not for lack of practice).
�2012-present E. S. Pfahl. All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means - - graphic electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, information storage and retrieval systems - - without written permission of
E. S. Pfahl
