I just stumbled upon Russ Mills on a random google search for “great illustrations”. I’m often surprised by what I find; there’s good, there’s bad, and there’s Russ Mills. I knew nothing about him, but his portraits blow me away. The chaos is intricately woven with carefully rendered forms. It’s hard to tell where one ends, and the other begins. The pieces exude energy, his subjects are very charismatic. He has a very limited use of color, which I think accentuates the power of the grayscale media. The density of these illustrations is also very eye-catching. The splatters, streaks, and smears layer upon themselves and make the figures heavy and stark against the plain backgrounds. I find these portraits unique in the fact that they are quite abstract, but you would have no problem recognizing the person he is portraying. I love how realistically he draws the faces. It’s a fantastic contrast to grunginess of the form of the figure. Overall, I’m very happy to have found this artist, Russ Mills, and I will be researching more of his works for the future.
I said it before, I say it again: in visual arts contrast is GOD. The juxtaposition of extreme dark and extreme light in these chaotic patterns is what makes these images so damn striking.
ReplyDeleteGorgeous stuff.
These images are fascinating. They look almost like fashion photography.
ReplyDeleteHis work sort of reminds me of the work of Gustav Klimt. I like the use of the realistic faces and the wildness all round them. Very interesting.
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