Reportage by Bill Russell

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Reportage by Bill Russell

The sketchbook journalism and reportage of Bill Russell. Visual journalism, drawings and stories done on-the-spot.

10/02/2025

In the summer of 1815 English painter George Robert Lewis wandered the countryside of Northern Wales, filling a small sketchbook with exquisite pen and ink drawings of rural laborers haymaking and harvesting. It deepens our appreciation for the quiet dignity and importance of the work we all do.

Sketching and honoring rural labor in early 18th C. Britain

09/18/2025

In 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government interned 120,000 Japanese Americans. Artist Estelle Ishigo, a Caucasian woman, voluntarily joined her Japanese American husband at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming. For three years, she drew camp life, documenting hardships and resilience, finding acceptance and purpose despite the conditions.

Finding love and art through hardship

09/11/2025

I had a chance to re-visit (and draw at) two fairs from my childhood...the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), and the Centerville Amusement Park, both in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. These places are not how I remember them, so the adage that 'you can't go home again' rings true.

Drawing the present through the pull of past

09/04/2025

Meaning is a construct shaped by memory, culture, emotion, and the stories we choose to tell. They’re not just about place, but about how place becomes charged with personal resonance through time and perception.

The drawings I made of my hometown don't just document a real place but are embedded with what I remember and that feels true to me.

When memories are flooded with feelings, the drawings I make become fallible visual narratives.

08/07/2025

By the time Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was thirty-five, he was suffering from alcoholism and dementia, most likely brought on by syphilis. His behavior was unpredictable, and often violent. Desperate, his mother had him committed to a sanitarium outside of Paris. It was while undergoing treatment that he created a series of drawings of the circus. In fact they helped persuade the doctors he was on the mend, ultimately leading to his release.

Joyful visual journalism from fin-de-siècle Paris

06/26/2025

Back in 1564 was Pieter Bruegel the Elder a visual journalist? His drawings hold the key. Bruegel was a keen observer of the world around him, and his graphic work reflects a deeper presence within everyday life. He traveled extensively, sketching landscapes mostly. He acted as both a witness to his times and a commentator.

Observational, satirical and spiritual scenes from a 16th-Century Artist

05/29/2025

German illustrator Fritz Busse had a restless spirit, traveling to cities around the world and from the sketchbooks he filled came many published books about urban life.

An artist who blended ink, watercolor and restlessness to create expressive urban scenes

05/22/2025

Some artists are unintimidated by drawing the scale and scope of crowd scenes. I'm not so good at it. I can't seem to find focus amongst these frenzied, often noisy human gatherings. Here are a few that can.

Finding focus amongst frenzied, often noisy human gatherings

05/15/2025

Englishman Howard Carter drew and documented ancient Egyptian wall hieroglyphics and decorations before he discovered King Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Read about him on my latest Substack.

An artist and archaeologist discovers and documents Egypt’s ancient wonders

04/03/2025

In 1905 Jo Mora wrote to his parents, ‘If I don’t leave now, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life here.' His pencil and watercolor drawings of Hopi culture and traditions embody the essence of visual storytelling and serve as a valuable ethnological record of a disappearing culture.

Native culture and more Cowboy of the American West

03/27/2025

A sketch is not just a sketch but a potent vehicle for socially conscious work, a medium to tell the stories of the unacknowledged, and a way to illuminate the great need for care, empathy and resources. Architect, professor and urban sketcher Daniel Winterbottom and I talk about drawing the homeless and encampments of the unhoused.

A conversation with artist Daniel Winterbottom about sketching the unhoused and their encampments

03/20/2025

English sculptor Barbara Hepworth went into operating rooms and drew surgeons at work. It had a lasting effect on her modernist sculpture.

Operating room as drawing studio

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San Rafael, CA
94903

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https://RussellReportage.com/

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Drawing Stories

Illustrator and visual journalist Bill Russell draws and interviews and makes drawings of people he finds interesting from Burning Man to the San Francisco Dump. His form of reportage and illustration begins with a pen, a sketchbook and some conversation.