I have been looking at a lot of themes for WordPress. especially one that is either easy to modify or on to make child themes with. So far I have had no luck, I am looking for a theme that does not use too much of its own style of coding and functionality but stays close enough to WordPress standards.
It would also be nice to have the code for a single post in one location so that it is easy to place elements from a post placed where you want them.
Hedley Phillips
Have you had a look through Smashingmagazine? They run a lot of articles on WordPress and developing it. They recently ran a series on templates.
http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/