Welcome all, my name is Russell R Cera - professional for over two decades in fine, graphic advertising and conceptual art. In addition to a successful full-time career as a creative art director for AMPRO SPORTS (the nation's largest volume garment printer), I have established myself as an award winning color separator, freelance illustrator and editorial contributing editor to a widely acknowledged trade magazine. Taking my interest in sharing my ideas and views through word, I've spent the last few years honing my creative writing skills as an aspiring part-time novelist, script, treatment and editorial writer. Involved in several collaborations with other talented artists and writers, my own efforts have helped to spawn original properties intended for publication, television and film. Even more recently, I've begun to consider, of all things, developing my personal hobby for impressions and voice artistry into something a little more than just a gimmick to entertain family and friends. On the personal side I am a husband to a wonderful multi-talented wife and father to two beautiful children, with whom above all, I enjoy spending my free time with! My "other" hobby is music (guitar more specifically), to which I've dedicated nearly twenty years to. To put it plainly, my plate is very full!
My passion for artwork derives from a love for conceptual thinking and design. Since I can recall, I've always wanted to conceive all sorts of subjects directly from my imagination to paper. I love the immediacy of translating what my mind's eye sees into a creature, vehicle or environment for example. And while I do enjoy rendering, it's more of a necessary process to completing a finished piece. This helps to explain why I have a large stable of unfinished works that go long periods of time without seeing the light of day. It's unfortunate, but the discovery of the idea and how to visually represent it, the movement, the flow, the circumstances the subject matter is involved in; all the ingredients that go into telling a visual story, is why I love to illustrate. Once I've conceived the idea and translated it to paper in some fashion, my natural instinct is to move on to the next idea to regain the excitement of creating something out of nothing.
This is where writing came in - the exhilaration of creating stories purely from ideas. I've always wanted to write fiction, as I naturally conceive characters and conflicts all the time. However I have a very difficult time reading fiction, where I tend to recreate the words into inner-visuals to the finest detail, slowing up the process. Of course, one must study the works of others while developing their own style, so it's become a paradox of sorts, that writing has become a passion where reading has not. I'm really working on changing that!
Creative writing is an extremely difficult process with highs and lows, epiphany moments as well as utterly destructive ones. It's certainly different from a per project article about a non-fictional subject. As an editorial writer, I had to learn to be both articulate and concise as well as be able to accept the editor's job of tearing everything apart to fit space! This more than likely forced me into self-editing, always trying to say something profound in a shorter amount of time. This tendency to self-edit, while I would not recommend to any writer, has made me realize that I truly enjoy taking works or passages and improving upon them, either my own or others as well.
To be continued...
My passion for artwork derives from a love for conceptual thinking and design. Since I can recall, I've always wanted to conceive all sorts of subjects directly from my imagination to paper. I love the immediacy of translating what my mind's eye sees into a creature, vehicle or environment for example. And while I do enjoy rendering, it's more of a necessary process to completing a finished piece. This helps to explain why I have a large stable of unfinished works that go long periods of time without seeing the light of day. It's unfortunate, but the discovery of the idea and how to visually represent it, the movement, the flow, the circumstances the subject matter is involved in; all the ingredients that go into telling a visual story, is why I love to illustrate. Once I've conceived the idea and translated it to paper in some fashion, my natural instinct is to move on to the next idea to regain the excitement of creating something out of nothing.
This is where writing came in - the exhilaration of creating stories purely from ideas. I've always wanted to write fiction, as I naturally conceive characters and conflicts all the time. However I have a very difficult time reading fiction, where I tend to recreate the words into inner-visuals to the finest detail, slowing up the process. Of course, one must study the works of others while developing their own style, so it's become a paradox of sorts, that writing has become a passion where reading has not. I'm really working on changing that!
Creative writing is an extremely difficult process with highs and lows, epiphany moments as well as utterly destructive ones. It's certainly different from a per project article about a non-fictional subject. As an editorial writer, I had to learn to be both articulate and concise as well as be able to accept the editor's job of tearing everything apart to fit space! This more than likely forced me into self-editing, always trying to say something profound in a shorter amount of time. This tendency to self-edit, while I would not recommend to any writer, has made me realize that I truly enjoy taking works or passages and improving upon them, either my own or others as well.
To be continued...
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