Art update (or almost art)

Finishing up projects for clients lately. The artwork is unpublished so far so I can’t present it here yet. I’ve worked with different techniques in artifact drawing and reconstructions and I’m pleased with the results. It’s good to stretch yourself even if you’ve been using the same technique for over 30 years.  Other projects I’m currently working on are the master bedroom of my craptastic old house (sanding the 130 year old floors took two full days) and starting on ”Foxy” the carousel Fox (pretty original name there). Working in 3 dimensions is quite different but a nice challenge. I have more of an appreciation for sculpture now, and for the strength it takes to swing a mallet for hours.

Downtime

Having trouble with a PC that holds many of my images.  Hope to have some new work up soon. Too busy to keep the web site up-to-date is a good thing I guess.  Clients come first. More later.

House Portraits

© Rusty van Rossmann "The Albany Cutter" Graphite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This house in Albany was the basis for a winter scene requested for a Holiday Greeting card.  My normal house portrait style is pen and ink. In using Graphite I combined a looser portrait style with the addition of figures to add some historical life to the portrait.

The title refers to the popular type of sleigh.

The Family Tree

One of the projects I am currently working on is a Family Tree. The result will be three seperate trees showing different lineage pairs. As an illustrator it’s always fun to pick styles from illustrators you admire and tweak them a bit to get what you want. I’ll include some photos as the trees progress but the main elements will include hand inked background ghost images of historically significant family structures, names, dates, and personal information in calligraphy, and miniature portraits of as many family members as possible (I haven’t worked out the media for these yet). I’m playing with inluences from Arthur Rackham, Hans Holbein, and C.D. Gibson. Lineage tracing elements may be Victorian influenced line work but I haven’t decided yet. Each element needs to be developed and redone multiple times before the final version so this may take awhile. The design also needs to consider the addition of information or portraits as they become available. It’s quite the puzzle.

32 years in business!

Van Rossmann Illustration is 32 years old! Wow.

Started in the Summer of 1976, at Sonoma State University, my vision of providing world class artifact drawings has reached a pretty big milestone. Over the years my work has expanded from artifact drawing, cartography, and report graphics to include logo design, commercial advertising, brochures, medical illustration, portraits, charicatures, cartoons, sculpture and 2d fine art. Can’t seem to settle down to one thing but exploration is what art is all about.

After over 30 years of working in the art world (mostly through word of mouth) it’s time to do some self promotion. In this Blog I will attempt to provide information on my projects as they progress, and let more of the world know who I am and what I can do. I plan on providing as much information as I can on what I’ve learned over the years (if I can remember) so new illustrators can benefit from my experience and my continued process of learning.

Here we go.