We've Been Here Before
Mixed Media
08/10/19
Illustration
08/10/19
Illustration
Exhibition Text
This purpose of this illustration is to bring not only awareness but to protest against the living conditions that many undocumented children suffer through while being held in the border. My piece showcases a faceless child who is being taken a mugshot. I was influenced by the pictures that were taken in the holding facilities as well as the pictures of the Mississippi raids. Everything within this piece is made from colored pencils, markers, and pastels.
Inspiration
For this piece I chose Milton Glaser's "Dylan" and Rob Rogers' "Immigrant Children". I used Dylan as an stylistic reference for my piece. Glaser establishes emphasis on the top half of the Dylan through color and contrast against the black and white background of the piece. I chose to emulate this stylistic choice within my illustration. Immigrant Children is a political cartoon depicting an immigrant family running away from trump, except their child seems to have been caught by the Donald himself. I chose as inspiration as I also wanted to portray a sense of protest against the mass detention of children as well.
Process
I began my process by playing around with perspective. I firstly illustrated a figure in a diagonal perspective which allows us to demonstrate a figures, front and side. For this I went with a more cartoonist style as an homage to political cartoonist. I then drew a mugshot height chart behind the figure in a diagonal perspective as well. For the thought bubble I drew interconnected circles, then I erased all the interconnections to get the frame for the thought bubble. I first planned to do the image in black and white, but the end result wasn’t artistically appealing as it felt barren. The same can be said of a figure, due to the cartoonist inspiration my figure was comprised of exaggerated features, granted it did look like an actual cartoon, but it took away from the unity of my piece, so a redesign was much needed. The redesign proved to be a good choice, as the more anatomically accurate redesign belonged along the other designs found within the image. I also removed the diagonal angle of the image, and made the figure in the front center. Then came the question of the facial expression of the figure, I didn’t want to add a facial expression as I thought It would make it more universal if the figure had no face, as anybody could then project themselves unto the figure. I then decided to create a more geometric mug shot chart to go with the formality of this redesign. Keeping with the theme of formality for this redesign, I used a quarter to better improve the frame for the thought bubble. The end result of these redesigns were a more clean and artistically appealing work of art. Then came the time to colorize my illustration. For the thought bubble I wanted the color to be one solid color, so I bought some markers which allowed me to get the color tones i was looking for. As for the background I used a combination of pencil and pastel to create a gradient for the background.
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