Chris Hanna

If you've ever been to a secondhand store, you might recognize decor and art with a look you can't just quite pin down. There's geometric shapes, fancy-looking materials, and it looks so...refined somehow. https://www.are.na/block/4496275 It's called Frasurbane. I didn't know what to call this until one day I stumbled on the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute. I'm not sure who runs it but someone out there is looking for all these old mass-market aesthetics and naming them. Thanks to that, all kind of collections on the internet have popped up using these new names. I love to see these kinds of movements, driven by curiosity and exploring the past. https://www.are.na/block/4496255 Personally, I like the eclectic look of it all. Surrealism, classical design, later art movements, and luxury all grouped into one. It just feels like I'm in a bankers office, a 90s music video, or holding a box of old software. So here's a painting I did, based on a magazi...

Small museums are the best!  Last weekend I went to the Texas Transportation Museum with my girlfriend Aamerah to take some pictures. I've loved trains since I was a kid and I thought photos in the train cars would make some nice pictures. Originally I started taking photos just to use as a reference, but now I like for them to stand on their own as art. I remember when I first asked her to model for me during our first summer together. She was confused and flattered at the same time, but over time we both grew. It quickly became something we put a lot of thought into to create a shared vision. The lighting in this passenger car was so good. It was really sunny outside and it took some fiddling with my point-and-shoot camera to get good shots. But all the windows gave us some chances to filter out the extra light.     Photography is interesting because I never really know how it'll turn out until I get my photos on the computer. That little screen on the camera doesn'...

Last weekend I took the yearly family trip to my uncle's cabin. I've been making this trip with my brothers and step-dad for about 20 years! Each trip is a nice little peek into how I've changed over the past year. When I was about 19 or so I first brought drawing materials to the cabin. I tried drawing one of the many purple flowers around this part of Florida in spring. Lately I've been focused on painting with gouache and watercolors. I didn't have any room for gouache, so I used my travel watercolor set I usually take everywhere with me.  The first was pretty tough because of all the greens and the overcast clouds. It can be hard to really give the landscape shape on days like that. On the bright side, I really liked the depth of the shadows I ended up getting.  So for the second one I picked a simpler composition of a nice group of palms and trees. It's tempting to try to put everything I see in a picture, but it usually turns out better when I simplify and...