Hello Martin
I have taken a look at the two sites in your sig, I hope that's the ones you wanted critiqued, otherwise, eek :?
Anyway so my opinion for what it's worth of the first site is that it's quite dated, for example the scrolling marquee text - nobody does that anymore
The header with the wood effect is very amateurish and the colours are a bit, um, not very nice. I think it needs more of a structure and better alignment of everything.
I'm not sure of the message you're trying to get across with the child in the top left, but I don't think it works, and the text on the picture needs fixing (anti-aliasing, alignment etc)
Also not sure if this is adding any value:
Take a look at this, you're missing some quite important things that you could have a go at addressing:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.mphwebdesign.co.uk
This link might also be of help
http://cgi.w3.org/cgi-bin/tidy
I feel the same about the second site,
www.martinhopkinssom.co.uk
It's just a little cheesy, unstructured, and I don't like the choice of colours and text.
Having said all that - don't give up, the most important thing is that you do something you enjoy, and if people see your portfolio and want to give you money for a site, then it's cool.
I would suggest you read up on design principles in general, xhtml, css, and web design.
Good luck 8)
