Okay, I’ve not posted much in the last few days but I have a reason. It has been unreal busy over here, I’m preparing our marketing plans for next season and the off season work. I’m out in the blistering heat taking photos, which I enjoy but the heat is just unbelievable. I’ve got new projects coming at me left and right, things I was never told about last minute projects just tons of things. To top it all off my parents are coming to visit this week from Mississippi for my son’s birthday and well the house needs to be cleaned and my wife hasn’t been feeling well. On the creative side I’ve been considering submitting my work to a few shows, one at projekt30.com and another to a digital art show I heard about today, here’s the link www.artofdigitalshow.com. I’m always looking for new exposure so if you know of another such opportunities please tell me about it, drop me an email or leave a comment about it. Well that’s my quick what’s going on overview hope to be back full force in the coming days.
Cris

Holy Hell! The summer is only half over and I’m already going nuts. It’s getting super busy and lots of deadlines surrounding me, so my time is getting chewed up by work, work, work. With my camera at the ready I’ll be out and about camp all week taking photos of the joys of summer camp. If time permits I hope to be able to share some of those with you here, so keep a look out. Enjoy the sun!

Cris

Well I decided that I’m going to combine my personal blog, where I rant or used to rant about random everyday things that occur in my life and this visual blog into one. It occurs to me that it all comes together and it really is where all my creativity and most importantly my inspirations come from, good or bad. So from now on this space wont be specifically about my work but more on my work and where it comes from. If interested you can see some of my past posts at my personal blog which I will be putting out of commission soon. Well without much fuss here’s a little blurb on my day today. Nothing to crazy, your typical work day. I did stay quite busy and was looking forward to lunch, a break from the office for a bit, yeah well not so easy. My wife is pregnant, so bless her heart she’s a bit irritable and I’m always perfect at irritating her so lunch didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I don’t mean to piss her off but I do nonetheless, guess I have this really bad habit of saying the wrong thing . Well she’s off teaching dance tonight so hopefully she’ll be in a better mood tonight. I am cooking dinner that should put her in a better mood. Well on a lighter note, I was going through my files and found some photographs I took the other day when we went to the park I had totally forgotten about them. I’m hoping to get a chance to post some of them later this week. I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of this new combination of the blogs, it just makes sense to me, oh well. 


I’m updating the blog a bit, so things may not be working normal.

I’ve finally arrived and as you can see I’m still settling in. I’m still pretty new to this blogging thing but since I started things have been looking promising. I feel more creative and more open to new ideas. So the blog has moved to wordpress with more choices and customizable abilities I feel more at home. I plan on posting more images in the coming days while I get my creative wheels cranking. I hope you’ll bear with me as I get use to my surroundings with this new format. Comments are always welcome, and appreciated. I’d love to hear what you think of the new set up, not totally different but cleaner I think.
Cris

Here’s a kind of dark piece, a bit too much red for my taste. I was playing around with some of my sons books he’s been asking me to read to him over the last few days and well I started taking some photos. It started quite differently and I’m not sure how I feel about it. In all honestly I usually love about 10% of all the images I create, tough critic I guess. What I was seeing in my head isn’t exactly what I’m presenting here but that may or may not be a good thing. I do enjoy how part of the image seems to be blurry or on fire, an interesting effect. I have noticed an interesting phenomena that a lot of my work lately has been based around my son and his toys and other items that all tie right back to him. I suppose my life is really based around his life and his wants and needs. I imagine all parents can relate to that. When you sit down and look around your life is somehow engulfed by “Little People” and “Noggin” at least for the parents of toddlers. Well enough ranting, here’s a new piece to pick apart, remember comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Cris

Another Week, Another Monday. . . Here’s an image I shot of a cute little flower my wife got from some of her students after I accidentally killed it.(oops, sorry) I killed it on accident I swear, reaching over it to get something I somehow broke the stem in half. Well here’s my attempt at trying to save it . . . hope you like it. Comments are always welcome.
Cris

Well I gave this image a shot and it turned out a bit dark. I tried to just tackle this piece without much thought other than create an image that was visually pleasing to me. I kind of like it, in some aspects. The colors are mild and not too wild and there’s some texture to the image that I like. Overall I don’t think it matters what it is but it’s a step in the direction I want to go. The image is actually made up of about 4 or 5 total images. Some I used for color and textures, if you look closely you might be able to make some of the other images out. I hope to have some more simple concept images to post in the coming days. As always your comments are always welcome, feedback is very useful.

Still working on the bunny, but I wanted to drop a quick line about this book. I was looking for my wife’s old pregnancy books since she’s getting her motherly urges now that she’s pregnant again, anyway back on point, I found this book called Art and Fear that I had bought when I was in college. It was actually recommended to me by my old life-drawing professor. It’s a quick read only about 120 pages and full of really interesting content on the types of things that hold most of us back from really going out and being artists. It has helped me through some tough times and it’s funny that I ran into it today as things in my creative life are in my opinion looking better than they have in quite a while. Here’s a quick little excerpt from the book that I find quite amusing - ” Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these. Who cares? Who would know? and What difference would it make? An the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody and None.” - Art & Fear p.28
Cris

Here’s an image I worked on the past couple of days. A colorful combination of elements that seem kind of inviting. My son growled at it when I was working on it, I guess he likes it. Comments are always welcome, thanks

Yeah go figure I couldn’t get anything to come together yesterday. I took about 10-20 photographs yesterday that I wanted to work with but nothing fell into place. I tried new things I looked at old photographs it just wasn’t coming together, it all looked like the same crap. I’m going to take some photos this weekend and just post what I see, time to go back to the basics.
Cris

Well, this is a little better. Not always a fan of cropping but it does come in handy to remove the not so great portions and leave the useful ones. I like the contrast between ligth and dark here, more interesting this way. It’s still a bit too much for me, too much information and it doesn’t say anything. Strike one I guess, back to the drawing board.

I started taking some random photos yesterday and tried a few things. I wasn’t too happy with what I came up with so I’m not even going to post it. However today I gave it another shot, not extatic with this but it’s a little more interesting. I’m not too happy with the computer graphics colors but I do think there’s some hope still. Let me think about this. . . .

I’ve been working on this piece for a few weeks and it resembles a bit what I’ve done in the past. I feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over again. I’m having a hard time moving away from repetition. I’d like to move in an entirely different direction over the coming months, maybe something more traditional. Anyway here’s the image I’d appreciate any comments. I do like the image somewhat but its just not strong enough.

I thought I’d have a little fun today, so I decided to find a simple and creative way to create a profile image to post here. I was watching my son play on the back porch today and it hit me. He has these “Little People” toys and I decided what better way than to find the one that looks like me the most. After searching through his mountain of toys to find one I think I found one kinda close to looking like me. Anyway I took a few photographs of one haha, I think it speaks volumes.

It has been almost 2 years since I graduated from college with a Bachelors of Fine Arts many things have happened in my life and career since then. Over the last 3 years I got married and have a beautiful baby boy who’s 2 wonderful years old now. I have a good job working for a summer camp as their Marketing Director in the state of Virginia. All and all I’m lucky to have so much however as far as the career I had envisioned for myself and my artwork seems very lacking. I have spent the last 2 years of my life trying to figure out how to get back to the creative person I was in college, and part of the art scene again. My work is just not developing the way that I’d hope. I have the desire to create work just no real inspiration to create. So I have decided to give myself this challenge, whether or not anyone will see this work I think I owe it to myself to try. I have decided to challenge myself to create a substantial body of work over the next 12 months that can inspire to continue my work as an artist. I will showcase the work in progress here and write about the process as it goes.