Clownfish painting

 This was a painting I recently finished for a class project.  My reference was a picture of a clownfish in a sea anemone that I reversed and added a lot more substance to in order to make it truly mine.

star pics

 These were pictures I took about a month ago.  I started by just taking long exposures of the stars and accidentally bumped my camera.  When the picture was ready to see it had caused a light tail.  This gave me the idea to intentionally move the camera slowly during a 20 second exposure.  It was a lot of fun experimenting and I think some of the pictures turned out pretty cool.

"Have you seen a child the color of wheat?"

My scene for the opera of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" is about the three travelers asking the mother of Amahl about a child the color of wheat, referencing their search for the baby Jesus.  When  I listened to this  scene I am reminded of night falling or day breaking....some change of color happening.  I also really liked the idea of doing a stained glass window effect even before I knew what part I was doing it for.  I want to make a stained glass window where the colors gradually change from either night fall or day break and once the change has occurred maybe the window opens and there is some type of pastoral scene taking place.  Maybe a silhouette of people migrating with animals to the Christ babe.

JDRF Poster: Walk For The Cure

I really liked the poster project for several reasons: it was something I haven't done before, I got to choose the material, and I learned some neat tricks in photoshop.
My favorite aspect was doing the syringe and making it fractured with people's faces inside.  I feel like it adds an aspect of the human side of the disease and how people's lives are directly affected by diabetes.
The most difficult part for me was getting all of the typography to harmonize.  I spent more time on the wording than the graphics.  
Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and now I feel like I can make a poster for any occasion!

JDRF Poster Project

JDRF stands for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and is the worldwide leader for researching the cure for Type 1 Diabetes, also known as Juvenile Onset Diabetes. Since its founding in 1970, the JDRF has contributed more than 1.5 billion dollars to research and more than 80% of JDRF's expenditures directly support research and research-related education.


The foundation conducts numerous fundraising events such as walks, rides, online support, and even a children's congress where twice a year children from every state with Type 1 travel to Washington D.C. to advocate a cure.  


I want to create an awareness poster for JDRF illustrating the need to not only raise funds for a cure but to educate the public on what Type 1 is and its ordeals that go with it.  Many people associate diabetes with over-weight or older people.  Type 1 affects children and young adults, some with no pre-existing family condition.  Type 1s are also insulin dependent, meaning they must inject insulin for every meal and an additional injection before bed.  Knowing exactly who is going to contract this condition is sketchy as most cases there is no warning.


Here is the link to the JDRF home page:  http://www.jdrf.org/

Water color exercises

 For watercolor we had to study different fruits and vegetables.  My favorite to paint were mangos and tomatillo peppers.  The background was done wet-on-wet with salt for an interesting textured effect.

Sundance Square

 Here are some photos I took one night in Sundance Square in Fort Worth.  The night colors are sketchy but if the right exposure is used the colors really pop.  This was the first time I have ever taken photos of a city at night and I feel like I learned a lot from this experience.

 Someone had just broken this door...seemed like a cool subject!