Who would let in in their art book? Good question. They have no idea who I am, which is probably why I got an invite. It's from an organization in Calgary who wanted to do a project, but needed to fill 104 pages and didn't have enough artists, so I get an invite from a friend to supply some filler! Yay! I have never been so happy to be filler before. The only thing is that I know a lot of the artists involved and they are VERY good...like "I don't need a day job because I make enough money on art" good. I really wish I had more time to put into this.
The premise of the book is classical literature. Basically drawing any character or scene from a book that is public domain. This includes most things written before 1924 are fair game. People are doing things like Huck Finn, War of the Worlds, Grimm Fairy Tales, Greek mythology, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, etc...Artists are paid in copies of the book that they can sell, which is pretty cool.
My choice was "A Modest Proposal" By Jonathan Swift. In his proposal, Dr. Swift proposes an intriguing way to help combat the great Irish famine. Essentially if the Irish were to sell their children to English nobles to be used as food, everyone would benefit. The nobles would have an exotic new meat to be served at dinner time, and the Irish solve their overpopulation woes and can once again afford to feed themselves. It is a super dark satire that a lot of people thought was serious. He presented it in a very sensible manner referring to studies and statistic in a very scholarly fashion. It's quite smart, but also very depressing just to even think of the famine where 1/3 of the country starved to death while still being a net food exporter.
My vision for the book is of a happy English family going on a shopping trip. I thought a lot about everything I would put in, but I think my execution sucks. I think I drew a nice wall, though! I will over-analyze everything below. You can skip that if you like.
My initial idea was for a bunch of kids playing and one child appearing to be partially made of food. Then, as I drew the kids, things seemed to take a more macabre twist. I was going to have the one in the bottom left playing pin the tail on the donkey, but after I accidentally drew one pant leg and one short leg and therefor had to give him the peg leg, I thought the blindfold might look more like his eyes had been taken out. I then wrote "return" on his shirt to imply that his purchasers were not happy with the eyes and leg they had before and they wanted a refund. I then decided to add words like "zesty", "prime" and "snack" to the other child's clothing. After the kid in a dunce cap gazing into the play cauldron, I decided on other touches like someone sprinkling seasoning into to pot as the child looks...and the grabby hand and the child disappearing to the left. On the industrious side, I researched games that were played at the time (but didn't use most of them), drew an authentic Irish guardsman uniform and I think I did fairly well with the period costumes at the bottom. I like the idea of the shadows showing their vile intentions (and their daughter's not), but I don't think I did too well. I wanted the English to remain faceless and shrouded. Everything is in warm greys except for the children, that I did in cold grays and less detail. Even their faces are slightly grayed as well as joyless, I thought using two different grayscales might make it appear that the kids were already partially dead and no longer fit in with the rest of the living world.
Again, ambition over ability. The story of my artistic career.
Anyways, i'm going to be in a book!
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