Nice Negative Space Man!

A little more  work  on Munchie this week. Another photo has been added to the Brass Ring Gallery.  Always  good to learn something new (even at my age) . Had an Aha moment when the master carver was helping me with relief depth.  Realized the background was a negative space I could adjust to bring 3D definition to specific points on the figure. Too used to thinking like a 2D artist but the same principle of weighted line applies. It was nice to know my brain wasn’t totally full.

Coyote Returns

© Rusty van Rossmann "Coyote" 1979

 

I’m starting to  add older work to my Artifact Drawing Gallery.  This was a piece done back in 1979 as an excercise in pointillism. The original model was a photograph of a wooden head in a National Geographic Book.  This piece became my logo  early on in my illustration business. What can I say. I was young and thought it was cool. I think it scared clients away.

Regarding Pointillism. I distinctly remember an early job interview where my work was laughed at for its high amount of detail and time involved.  I got the distinct impression they didn’t like pointillism because they couldn’t do it.  I didn’t get the job.

House Portraits

© Rusty van Rossmann

House Portraits have been a subject for me for years.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of Real Estate Agencies in providing portraits for ads and as homeowner gifts. Town & Country Realty and I have worked on their annual Christmas cards featuring local historic houses for 10 years now. I understand some people collect them! My House Portrait gallery is new and being filled out.

Scientific Illustration additions

Anterior view

I’m adding images to the Artifact Drawing Gallery. They won’t all be artifacts but that’s the bulk of work I do. I’ll include some report graphics as well so you get a sense of what I work on.

I’ve got a lot of images to upload so please bear with me.

Thanks

Learning Watercolor

Summer Squash

Another example of the variety of artwork I do.  This was a simple watercolor excercise where form was emphasized to make it work. I’m in the process of creating  a water color gallery so take a look if you like.

Icicles on the old house

Icicles on the Crack House

Dec 09. I had taken off the gutter system to paint the house over the summer. I didn’t quite get finished painting so no gutters this winter. We got some nice icicles instead! I’m sure that means more work for me in the spring, but we plan to replace the roof anyway.

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.

Flaked Stone Illustration Style

© Rusty van Rossmann

This is an example of my illustration style for flaked stone artifact drawing. Emphasis is placed on realistic rendering of shape through minimal linework and shading. Flake patterning is exact while material coloration is minimized. Keeping the image “clean” through minimal linework presents a clearer view and allows for emphasis of detail when calling out distinctive aspects of the artifact.

Some darkening of the shaded areas has occured through reduction of the image.

All artifacts are drawn at 100% when possible.

Breakthrough

© Rusty van Rossmann

This piece was a breakthrough painting for me and was done under the instruction of Mark Allison. I recall struggling with the use of color in my attempts at figure painting and got the impression that Mark didn’t think that my realistic renderings were art. I was angry when I painted it and tapped more into emotion than I normally do. I overemphasized the figure to express my frustration and caught the shadows representing different aspects of the model. The colors fell into place without me thinking about it and Mark made me stop before I kept messing with it. This piece won best 2d for that year’s Corvallis Community Art Show.

The title “Number 8″ came about because I needed to name it  for the show and this was only the eighth painting I’d done. Simple enough.

Something Different is always good.

 

© Rusty van Rossmann, inket on cardboard

I was working as a tech testing hand held barcode printers. The job required repeatedly hitting the cardboard with the printhead unit to simulate high volume usage. I got bored so produced an image. Each swipe of the ink is a barcode applied by hand. Took me an hour.

It was good to stretch my use of materials.

Barcoded detail