“Identity Crisis,” digital (ink on bristol), 17” x 11”, 2012.
I spent a couple weeks pouring over John Romita Sr. and Jack Kirby Marvel comics to draw this. I’d like to think of it as a “master copy.”
-CR
Excerpts from “Rights of the Pregnant Parent - Completely Revised,” mixed media in altered book, 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”, 2012.
Some images from another project for my Illustration Concepts class… In presenting my original concept for the assignment, I got so nervous articulating the deeply personal narrative of the piece that the professor interrupted and told me my neurosis was of much greater interest to him. Arguing that it clearly couldn’t all fit into just one image, he insisted that I do an entire book…
I stumbled upon this book in the “Take a Book, Leave a Book” shelf in one of RISD’s Liberal Arts buildings, and of course took it. The text worked all too well with my original concept, so I decided to alter it. The final piece encompasses the first thirty pages of the book, and reads like a giant gallery of all my worst fears and anxieties. It is also, in part, a miniature family history… Discussing lineage and inheritance in the context of my weird, often morose obsessions. Interwoven throughout are quotations from Bruce Springsteen’s “The River”, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein,” and bits and pieces of diary-comics from my own sketchbook.
I don’t really know how to photograph the entire thing properly for the internet, since you kind of have to hold it in your hands to get the full effect. Which is fine, because I’m not so sure I want everyone to see the full book. The images I have here are the ones I’m most comfortable showing, but they’re also a few of my favorite… You might notice one of them looks like an early version of my “Brother Elf” comic, which I was just beginning to think about, at this time.
I should confess, as a side note, that I didn’t actually leave anything on the shelf when I took this book - so it is technically stolen. Maybe I’ll just put it back…
-CR
“4/14/12,” ink on bristol, 11” x 17”, 2012.
For my Illustration Concepts class we were told to take notes on everything we did over the course of one day, and then illustrate some element of it. Being as obsessive as I am, I recorded an entire week… And, actually, never stopped. When I read a portion of my weekend to the class, people seemed to react to this morning, in particular, so I decided to draw a comic about it.
Some details may or may not have been altered, slightly, but by and large I tried to keep the writing intact. I tried to capture the immediacy of keeping a journal in the aesthetic of the piece - planning the images and layout as little as possible, and figuring things out as I drew it, all without reference. I don’t know how much of a success it is, in this respect… I think it still looks a bit too polished, at least in terms of the inks. But I did try.
-CR
“Viva!,” digital, 10 1/2” x 1 1/4” accordion-fold artist book, 2011.
I turned this series into an artist book a long time ago to photograph for a scholarship, but completely forgot to post it here. I think it feels much more “finished” with the cover and text, so I’m putting it up now. I may do a second series of these, eventually. Or just forget about it, like everything else.
From the original post:
“In my Illustration Concepts class I was assigned the task of creating a piece to address the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos in some way. Focusing on the concept of celebration of loss, I immediately began thinking about rock ‘n’ roll - specifically, how death in that world seems only to further elevate artists to a transcendent, mythic stature.
What’s more, I saw this as a good excuse to spend my weekend reproducing some of my favorite album covers.”
-CR
“Pair,” digital (linoleum print, ink on bristol), 2012.
I was buying new shoes awhile ago when I thought of this idea, and then decided to use it for an Illustration Concepts assignment later that week. This was originally designed as an artist book, but I don’t really feel like photographing that right now.
I really like my new shoes, as a side note.
-CR
“Shipwrecked,” ink on bristol, 11” x 17”, 2012.
The closest I’ll ever come to writing weepy teen poetry. I turned 20 in February and thought I’d dodged a bullet… Not quite!
-CR
“Brother Elf,” ink on bristol, 11” x 17” (four pages), 2012.
This is a story I’d been wanting to do for awhile, but struggled to articulate, at first. I’d really liked the material I’d written in early scripts, but couldn’t quite crack how to best convey it in comic form. It wasn’t until my Illus. Concepts professor assigned the task of “illustrating a mental disorder” that it occurred to me to refocus the piece. Forced to tie the strip back around to OCD (which was initially only reference once), I found a solution in the formal structuring of the strip.
Maintaining, for the most part, a rigid and repetitious format to the comic - redrawing on each page the same nostalgic image at the story’s center - I tried to turn the act of drawing, itself, into a motion of solidarity with my brother. The resulting errors between images also seem, to me, to comment on the concept of memory and ambiguity at the comic’s core.
That said, this was surprisingly fun to draw - I hadn’t taken into account how much I enjoy tedium. I also like that my brother and I look sort of like kids out of a Little Nemo strip.
-CR
“Pictures of My Cat,” ink on bristol, 11” x 17”, 2012.
Sometimes you just to have to draw cats.
Fun fact: My cat’s name is Bruce Willis. This isn’t related to the concept of the comic at all, it’s just a fact. A fun one.
-CR
“What Throne?” digital (ink on bristol), 12” x 12”, 2011.
This is album art for an album that doesn’t exist.
Last summer, The All-About and The Great American Novel were toying around with the idea of releasing a joint EP together just long enough for me to start and finish this piece. This was around the time that Jay-Z and Kaye West had released “Watch the Throne,” so I designed the art (and titled the album, itself) as a play on that. The project was ultimately scrapped, of course, but the All-About track, “(She’s a) Heartbreaker,” ended up on their new album. I have no idea what happened to The Great American Novel’s contribution (or if it was ever even recorded), or the duet-style Adele cover that was meant to close the EP… But I’m posting the art here for the sake of posterity, and also out of a deep-seated bitterness. I’m hoping to, as vengeance, inspire a grass-roots campaign to force them to release their version of “Someone Like You” - which almost certainly is what caused them to abandon the EP, out of embarassment.
-CR
“I Knew These Two People…” ink on bristol, 5” x 7” (diptych), 2012.
A belated Valentine’s Day piece… I spent mine drawing Travis and Jane from Wym Wender’s gorgeous “Paris, Texas.” Harry Dean Stanton didn’t turn out as recognizably “raggedy” as I wanted, but I think the two portraits are strong together. If I wasn’t at home and working on a computer without Photoshop, I might try coloring them.
Anyway, any excuse to spend an evening staring at pictures of Natassja Kinski and listening to Ry Cooder is a good one. Highly recommend.
-CR
