Artificial Topography

| Joshua Forrest Russell

(graphite, ink, digital)

This is a piece I did last spring. I wanted to go back to the basics and create new work using mainly my hands as inspiration. Tracing the outlines of different symbols and gestures to create an image. I started doing this while learning relief printing. It helped when creating my first blocks to carve something so familiar to me. I want to keep going in this direction and see what I can come up with as my experience grows.

JFR -@illustratedconnection.com

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The Cry

| Joshua Forrest Russell

(pencil, colouring pencils, digital)

Recently I’ve been playing with the repetition of minimal designs in the hopes of creating more detailed images. This is one in a recent series of three, they were inspired by landscapes and the symmetries/patterns that exists in the natural world and the human body. I’m hoping to transfer this image to a wood block and do some printing later this month.

JFR -@illustratedconnection.com

The (B)ackground

| Joshua Forrest Russell

(ink, pencil, colouring pencil)

I was recently given this beautiful vintage scrap book as a gift. Every page inside was empty except for the last. It had a ripped image, a diagram of a playground with kids playing on a structure. I found it haunting, nearly sad so I decided to add to the page, an attempt to try and fill in what was missing. This page had so much character and it inspired me to keep the concept going throughout the rest of the book. So now I’m making a complete work out of it. I’ll fill in each page by taking old images and cutouts I find and finishing/editing what’s missing. I will post more and more as time passes.

JFR -@illustratedconnection.com