Don't Panic - Chris Russo's Art

New Website

2009-12-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

Hey, everyone! Unfortunately this post doesn't have any drawings of its own, but I'm proud to say that I've launched another website which has a bunch of drawings that I haven't posted on this blog (as well as a few that I have). Right now it's just a simple indexhibit-based website, but I'm in a Web Design class, and I'm almost finished making a site that's completely my own design, so it'll most definitely be changing within the next few days. But in the meantime, I encourage you to check it out!

Click here to see it.

Quick Self Portrait

2009-10-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, y'all, been pretty busy with school and RA-ing which hasn't given me much time to post, but I thought I'd share this real quick.

Who is that handsome devil.

A Silly Post - Pokemon!

2009-09-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back at school which means that I've had a little less time for updating lately, but I haven't stopped drawing! I thought about posting some of the drawings around campus I've been doing lately, but since I have a lot of drawings of the campus up here already, I thought maybe I'd change it up and post something else.

This is a little... nerdy of me, but part of the RA job is to make nametags on the doors for all of my residents. People pick a lot of different themes for them, and for mine I decided on Pokemon, which I'm pretty much obsessed with. I did twenty-two really quick acrylic and pen drawings of different Pokemon and assigned each one to one of my residents. Quality-wise I'm not sure about them, some came out better than others, but I had so much fun making them that I figured I'd post them anyway. So, here they are:

(Don't forget to click on the image if you want to see a bigger version)

Bulbasaur: Ruairidh

Charmander: Mike

Chikorita: Caitlyn

Clefairy: Olivia

Cyndaquil: Aaron

Eevee: Daniel

Ekans: Sean

Gastly: Peter

Koffing: Graham

Larvitar: Andrew

Mareep: Sarah

Oddish: Chantal

Pikachu: Cleme

Poliwag: Azhar

Sentret: Anna

Slowpoke: Oresti

Squirtle: Cody

Tentacool: Hyuk-Gi

Togepi: Sasha

Totodile: Ben

Vulpix: Erin

Wooper: Briar

Last Post Before Junior Year!

2009-08-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

So I return to college at Pratt in about three days, and I'm really excited about it! I'm going back really early since I'm going to be an RA for one of the freshman dorms there. I'm hoping it'll be a good experience for me, that'll help me gain some more confidence and meet new people. I think networking is an important part of anyone's life, but artists in particular; for getting ideas from other people, collaborating on projects, just having people around to encourage you, and a million different other ways. Confidence and the ability to connect with other people are both things I'd like to improve in myself and use to help further my future career, so it seemed like a pretty great idea to me. And it should be a lot of fun.

But anyway, here are some drawings I've been doing over the summer on location at Coney Island and in my figure drawing class. I'm using a lot of color in many of these, which as I mentioned in my last post, is something I've been avoiding for a while. Something else I'm trying to do is to avoid "drawing with paint", and use shape instead of line when I'm painting. That's still something I need to work on - I'm using line more than shape in quite a few of these, so I suppose I've still got a lot of work ahead of me. But that doesn't mean there aren't interesting things happening in all of these! I wouldn't post them if I didn't think so.

All of these images were made with acrylic paint. (Maybe one of them has ink in it, too.) I have every intention in working back into several of these, especially the painting of the concession stand covered in signs. As always, if you like the images, click on them to see a bigger version.

I really can't wait to get back to Pratt where I can finally use the scanners instead of taking terrible photographs with my digital camera.

More Location

2009-07-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hello, peoples! I feel like it's been a while since I posted in here. I've done quite a few drawings that I like since my last post, not to mention filled my sketchbook and put myself in need of another one, so I figured I should probably post a couple. Location classes are going really well, and I'm currently working on making a more finished piece out of one of the drawings I did at Trinity Church last Sunday - it's a little intimidating since I consider myself a lot better at quick drawings from life than finished pieces from reference, but I know it's something I have to get used to eventually, so I'm fighting through it. Once it's done I'll try to get a good photo of the finished product up here.

Anyway, here's a bunch of drawings I've been doing in both figure drawing and on location, plus a few I just did on my own, in no particular order. Don't forget to click on the image to see a bigger version - apologies once again for the low picture quality - I've really got to get to a place where I can scan these instead of photographing them.

Here's a drawing I made with ink and a bamboo pen at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration - it's the marching band that they had there. They used old instruments and had uniforms and everything. Plus they were great to draw, they had some awesome faces. I started off doing a drawing that was a front-on view of the band until my teacher forced me to move, which made for a waaay better drawing. Trying to get interesting points of view is still something I need to keep in mind when I draw.

Here's another one from Old Bethpage - this is the bar that they had. I did this with acrylics and ink and a bamboo pen again. The place was actually really empty, apparently not many people come to visit on Sundays, so I had to do multiple drawings of the same guy. This doesn't look complete to me, but I think it starts to have a sense of space, and I just like the feel of the drawing. That, and the little girl at the counter was really amusing and really fun to draw.

This is one of the foxes at the Holtsville Park Zoo. It's watercolor and ink and bamboo (again). Again, I like this drawing for the feel of it and for some of the abstraction the wash beneath the line creates. I'm hoping to go back there soon, possibly to sell drawings like these of the animals, but even if that doesn't work out, just getting more drawings done there would be nice, they've got a lot of interesting animals.

Aaand here's a figure drawing! I did all of these drawings with acrylics and ink. I was trying to build up form using both, and I think it worked out pretty well, I especially like the way her arm looks, and I think it comes forward and space and wraps around. Her hand and foot are also pretty strong - the drawing itself is on the masculine side, though, and that's something I've had trouble with for a while, so I've got to work on that a little more.

I like this drawing because it has weight even just with a simple underlying abstraction. I just like that abstraction a lot - it gives it movement and rhythm, too. Once again, the drawing's a little masculine, though. I'm not sure what it'll take to fix that, but it's something for me to at least keep in mind.

I think this is one of the strongest figure drawings I've done in a while. This exercise is called 5 Pounds of Baloney - I'm not sure if I've ever posted a drawing like this on here, but basically the way the exercise works is you're supposed to draw a square on the page and draw the model as if she's been stuffed into that square without any space at all. It forces you to distort the drawing and take liberties with it and not be a slave to what's in front of you. Anyway, I like this drawing for a lot of reasons - it's got movement, it's got weight and dimension, the hands and foot are drawn well and have a lot of life to them (I've been having trouble with hands lately) and overall, the image just has an interesting mood.

Here's something out of my sketchbook - apologies about the glare on the image. It's mostly done in acrylics, but there's a bit of marker and ink in places. This started out as a bunch of drawings of my dog on top of each other that I started painting through, and then I went a little crazy with it. It doesn't exactly have a subject now, although my sister described it as looking like two shrimp having sex, so... make what you will of that. I feel like once again, this starts to have some weight and movement to it, and turns in space a little, and, at least for something in my sketchbook, it feels like a close-to-finished image. I was pretty satisfied that I was able to paint through something I'd already made and reinvent it, since that's often something I'm too scared of ruining an image to do.

This is the graveyard at Trinity Church. Once again, it's acrylics and ink and bamboo. I've been using paint a lot lately since I tend to rely too much on line, and I wanted to get away from mediums I used a lot at school, like marker. I did use ink lines to lay this out, so maybe I cheated a little, but I'd like to paint back into it and finish it, along with the other painting from Trinity Graveyard I'm currently working on. To me, this feels like it would make a good finished image as opposed to just a study, which is why I decided to post it - the drawing itself isn't complete, but as an image, I think it's relatively strong. I also like my color choice. Previously, when I used my full palette I've had a tendency to go all-out and get more caught up in color than the actual drawing, and so for a long time I've deliberately limited my color use. Here, my palette's limited, but at the same time more varied than usual, and I think it's starting to be successful.

Another thing I've been doing is long, continuous rolls consisting of one large drawing or several smaller ones linked together - it's difficult for me to get a good photo of one of them, but here's a link to one that my figure drawing teacher, Jeff Fisher took. Feel free to look through the whole album, or better yet, check out the whole class's body of work on his facebook - there's people that are my age, younger and older, with all variety of experience, and we're all getting better all the time, so I really recommend it. And if you happen to be around Long Island, you should definitely consider taking the class, too!

Location '09, Day 1

2009-06-13T12:12:00.000-07:00

It is officially June, which means Jeff Fisher's location class has finally started! This is my third summer taking this class, we go on field trips to various places every Sunday and draw there. It's pretty much the highlight of my summers. Traditionally our first trip is always to the Bronx Zoo, and that's where we went this time, too. Here are all of the drawings I did there, from the good to the mediocre. I'll try to post them in the order that I did them, as well, but it might not be completely accurate. Don't forget to click on the images if you want to see a bigger picture. Again, the picture quality isn't terrific because I had to resort to using a regular digital camera and cropping them in photoshop, but I like to think that the images are strong enough that it doesn't make toooo much of a difference. I usually have a rough time on the first trip, but I got a lot of good drawings done this time around.

Nudes

2009-05-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

You know what I've still yet to post? Figure drawings. Which is pretty dumb of me, really, because I do A LOT of figure drawings. I take a lot of classes with Jeff Fisher at the drawing studio (for reference, here's The Drawing Studio's website and Jeff's fan page on Facebook, I highly recommend checking them out) and that's where I do the vast majority of my figure drawing. It's probably one of my favorite things to draw, and these two models are some of my favorite ones to draw (especially Maria!) so... here they are.

The quality of the photos isn't quite as high as my previous posts since these were too big to scan and all I have is my little digital camera, so some of the detail might be lost. They're also a little dark, I had to photoshop some of them a little to make them look better. Don't forget to click the images if you want to see them bigger.

Trading Cards!

2009-05-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

So, Survey's over! Thank GOD. My body decided to rebel and get deathly ill about three days before it started, but I couldn't really get too much rest with all the work I had to do, so I've been pretty miserable for most of the week. But, I'm healed, and ready to celebrate the year being just about over. So, have a blog post.

These are a series of trading cards I did for Methods and Media that I put together and on display for Survey - it's me and my friends from school, in case you couldn't tell. They're all done in watercolor with a little bit of pen - not exactly a new medium for me, but since the assignment was to make something "self-promotional", I figured it would be good to stick with what I'm strong at. As always, click on the image if you want to see a bigger picture.

Campus, Watercolors, and More Trees

2009-04-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

I'm baaack. I had hoped my next post would be a little sooner than this, but finals are breathing down my neck, and I'm freaking out just the slightest bit getting ready. I have a lot of stuff I need to get done before then and I haven't really had time to update, I suppose. But as it's the weekend, I can take some time in between assignments to post a few things I've been doing in my sketchbooks.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful lately, which I'm sooo grateful for, because it means I can go outside to draw! I really do like drawing this campus. I think I should probably go off campus next time I want to draw though, since I've got a lot of drawings of the same buildings and things lately. Maybe after finals.

Make sure to click on the images if you want to see them bigger!

So here's the library. It's been a little while since I last used watercolors - for the most part I've just been doing quick pen drawings, and I really missed them. I wanted to see how little I could get away with describing and still have this drawing read well, and I think I accomplished that. It's got some weight to it, too, which is good, since it's something I have some trouble with when I'm drawing architecture.

I told you I draw trees a lot. I'm not sure if this is as strong as my tree drawings usually are or not, but I do think it's got some dimension to it. I have plans to do this drawing again with my tablet and make a poster out of it for my Illustration class, so expect to see it again.

And here's the cafeteria. My whole class was in here drawing for Methods and Media, the idea was to get a drawing with multiple figures and a sense of space. This is definitely my favorite drawing I did in there, I like the shapes, and I feel like the figures have weight even though I drew them pretty simply.

Here's something else we did for Methods. We were in the library, had to follow one person around and draw them in motion, you know, every time they moved just draw right over the first drawing. I am really, really happy with how this came out - it's got so much movement and it draws your eye all over the page, which is something I have trouble accomplishing with pen drawings. I think I should do more drawings like this one, it really forced me to look at and treat the drawing in a different way than I normally would.

Introduction, Landscapes and Trees

2009-04-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

Hello, internets.

My name is Chris Russo, I'm currently 20 years old, and enrolled in Pratt Institute's Illustration program, class of 2011 and... this is my art blog! But hopefully you managed to guess all of that from the title. Anyway, I decided to start this blog since I previously had a lot of my drawings up on Facebook, which I guess isn't quite as professional and also claims ownership to any images you upload there. So I figured my own blog is probably a better way to do it.

Anyway, since I have a looot of drawings stored on my computer, a lot of which aren't entirely relevant to the way I currently draw anymore, I'm not really sure where to start. So I think I'll start with a few drawings of one of my favorite things to sketch, Pratt's campus and its trees, and figure out where to go from there. Expect to see more up here soon!

Just click on an image if you want to see the full sized version.