UWM Illustration 2
Political "POW"erSize: 30.5 cm by 40. cm
Medium: Colored pencils and Gouache on Illustration Board Date: December 2019 Exhibition TextPolitical "POW"er is a modern spin on the classic political cartoon style, which I infused with Pop art, I took inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein, and from comic books like marvel comics. I wanted to express my political beliefs in how corrupted and divided our current bi-polar party system is, and I thought that a political cartoon would express this perfectly.
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Planning/Concepts
Inspiration
My inspiration for this piece was at first just some works of political cartoonists such as James Gill-ray and Steve Bell, who made political cartoons, James coming from more of an English background with more colonial style works, while Steve Bell worked with more 18th century America works and concepts. one of James works that really caught my attention and inspired me was his "A Sphere Protecting Against a Plane", which I don't really understand the message with it, but I am extremely fond with the style of it, and the comical aspect of a rather serious topic in Britain at the time of creation. Now with Steve Bell he was much more of a known American cartoonist, with less of a contemporary and well more obscene style. one of the works I really took inspiration from when I was researching, doesn't per say have a name, but is a part of a collection called "If...." which shows cartoons based on political leaders, and showed different what if situations with them in a comical and demeaning liberal stand point style. Along with the Political cartoon style, I figured I needed to make it pop, as most political cartoons were just prints, of black and white with small variants in color, so I decided to merge it with Pop Art. this proved to be successful as the two work extremely well together as a cohesive style, both being cartoon oriented and bending the laws of anatomy and traditional coloring. The artist I took inspiration from for the Pop Art style was Roy Lichtenstein who is known for many amazing Pop Art pieces, my inspiration being "Crying Girl", and others like "In The Car" and "M-Maybe". These all have a very broad and a kind of "look at me" style that immediately draws your attention to it and around it, making it hard to ignore it mostly because it just Pops out at you, hence why its Pop art. I want to mix both of the styles together, having the pop like style to jump out and cause a conflict like scenario to really explain the opposites of the democratic party and the republican party, to show their own weaknesses, and I found that these two style together really show that well.
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Planning sketches
The first planning faze that I went into was planning the actual character designs, and how I wanted to make the characters in the actual pictures to look. I wanted to convey the essence of the political parties in question, by making the democrat young, and happy, and the republican old and grumpy. I did this as most liberals are young millennial, with more upbeat attitudes (from what I've seen) while more republicans are elderly and are more easily angered. I also wanted to make both designs like their flagship logos, being the elephant and the donkey, so anyone anywhere could immediately understand and recognize the characters and the people I am talking about.
This sketch was my third attempt (the other attempts were too bad to actually put onto here (too sloppy)) so the whole Idea for this concept was to make it so I could convey the opposites of the two political parties, and to show how opposite they really are and can be. and to fit the double illustration requirement, I thought it would be a good idea to make it almost like a comic book argument taking place between two different panels. The character in this picture has smoke coming out of the ears and is visibly upset and angry, not to mention screaming at the opposition, to convey the traits I had explained earlier.
This sketch was the final one, as It is the prt. 2 of the other illustration, this is the other half of the argument that I created, showing the differences in demeanor and in tone between the two parties. I wanted to make the donkey seem more calmed down and almost more frightened by the screaming elephant baby boomer which is what I had based his design on.
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Process
Experimentation
Going into this project I had no previous knowledge on how gouache painting worked and how to spread and use the paint and the board to my advantage, other than a brief explanation from a teacher at MIAD during my pre-college course this semester when a classmate asked about them. I used this knowledge and after doing some research online through videos and websites, I learned how to effectively use gouache paints to really bring out all that they have to offer when it comes to painting a nice looking piece. I started experimenting with mixing colors together to create the certain blue, red and other colors I needed to get a nice clean and eye catching image. I used a special tool that I picked up from Blick art store where it is a simple marker, where you put water diluted paint of any sort into an empty paint pen, to create smooth and almost perfect marker like lines onto the paper, this made the one fear I had almost non-existent which was effectively getting black thick lines on the board to really emphasize the whole Pop-art side of my inspiration. This tool worked wonders as it created beautiful and clean lines (I used black, brown, and even red for certain areas of the piece). I wanted to create better contrast than I did with my previous entry within this UWM project, which all I did to the original picture is darkened the skin and fur tone of the Donkey and the Elephant to create a better contrast between them and the background to make them pop out even more and draw your attention to them even more.
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Process
First I started with creating the characters, I wanted to represent the American political parties in as many stereotypes as I could fit, that actually made sense. I started by basing the two characters off of humanoid bipedal versions of the parties mascots, the elephant and the donkey. From there, I designed their stature, their temperment, their outlook and how they held them self. The republican was definitely an easy one, I made him a bigger, more overweight, old wrinkly man with a grumpy and contemplative look, adjusting his tie and having that stereotypical easily angered demeanor. The democrat was slightly more difficult to design, but was still easily done, as I based him off of Andrew Yang (one of the current 2020 candidates) I represented him as a young forward thinking open minded and more laid back young adult, which I think I got that just right
After designing them I started to draw the basic structure of the two characters onto their respective pieces of art giving them dynamic poses for how I wanted to convey their demeanor and how they hold themselves in a political manor. This was quite easy as I wanted to stick with the always angry republican by having him yell and clutch his fists, with a blood vessel showing on his forehead. Which was countered by the donkey having a more passive and contemplative look, and having worried eyebrows, because he was being yelled at and was also concerned about what is going on politically.
I then translated my art work from the original piece that I did with colored pencil, instead just redrawing the figures to capture that same funny and comical dynamic pose that I gave them to create a nice and easily looked at and read almost comic book like set of pictures. From there I started to paint the background paying attention to the amount of water I used to make sure that the paint spread across the board effectively, I used Red and Cerulean blue for the backgrounds of the two works. After this was done I went to the suits, painting them in a deep black/brown mixture with water where I colored the whole suit, even over the lines, because I went over the lines in gray to make sure they were visible over the black paint. From that point I painted the skin and the mouths, I used Red and cerulean blue for the ties and I used Burnt Sienna brown for the donkey and a mixture of Titanium White and Black for the elephant skin. I went over with the gouache marker I used before to create the dots, using darker versions of the colors I made before for the skin tones. I finished the piece off with the black lines using the self made marker and black, to create the lines and the letters in the boxes.
After designing them I started to draw the basic structure of the two characters onto their respective pieces of art giving them dynamic poses for how I wanted to convey their demeanor and how they hold themselves in a political manor. This was quite easy as I wanted to stick with the always angry republican by having him yell and clutch his fists, with a blood vessel showing on his forehead. Which was countered by the donkey having a more passive and contemplative look, and having worried eyebrows, because he was being yelled at and was also concerned about what is going on politically.
I then translated my art work from the original piece that I did with colored pencil, instead just redrawing the figures to capture that same funny and comical dynamic pose that I gave them to create a nice and easily looked at and read almost comic book like set of pictures. From there I started to paint the background paying attention to the amount of water I used to make sure that the paint spread across the board effectively, I used Red and Cerulean blue for the backgrounds of the two works. After this was done I went to the suits, painting them in a deep black/brown mixture with water where I colored the whole suit, even over the lines, because I went over the lines in gray to make sure they were visible over the black paint. From that point I painted the skin and the mouths, I used Red and cerulean blue for the ties and I used Burnt Sienna brown for the donkey and a mixture of Titanium White and Black for the elephant skin. I went over with the gouache marker I used before to create the dots, using darker versions of the colors I made before for the skin tones. I finished the piece off with the black lines using the self made marker and black, to create the lines and the letters in the boxes.
Compare/Contrast
Similarities:
1. Both use thick black lines to provide borders on certain parts of clothing and outlines the figure 2. have a speech bubble on the top to show what they are saying/thinking 3. sharp popping colors that have no color gradation within them except for black shadows 4. have small dots to provide texture and color, instead of flat color Differences: 1. Human figure within Roy's art piece while mine are anthropoid animals 2. Roy's has an actual city scape as a background while mine is only a 2 rotating colors with a center. |
Reflection
The end products of these pieces in my opinion are outstanding, I wanted to convey my political message and beliefs within this piece, but keep them subtle and inconspicuous, which I believe I got down very well. I am overly proud of my craftsmanship, my work ethic, and my skills within creating these two illustrations. From the posing, to the color and wardrobe selection, I think I really made something that I can be proud of with this project. I am so happy with the designs of the characters and how they look and how they convey meaning and message with only two pictures. As for my political message, and what this piece fits in with my overall theme of self expression and self determination, I was expressing my political views through art because no one has listened otherwise, and I feel that both sides can relate to this piece, which is what I am so proud about achieving. I think on a technical aspect through the way I actually designed and processed this piece could have been a little better, I could have painted it with a bit more finesse with the background and made the donkey a little lighter as I feel there is just a bit too much contrast on him. I love how the final product came out to be and I really think this piece is one of my favorites within all of the work ive made up to January 2020.
ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
The artwork I did is entirely influenced by the inspiration I had from my pieces, the second I heard "Opposites" I thought of politics, then to political cartoons, then to pop art. Roy's work really helped me see the potential in my idea.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The people who make political cartoons such as Herblock, and David Low, are very creative and strong headed people, who can turn a controversy into a joke within seconds. It really inspired me when researching this topic.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Political cartoons and pop art go hand in hand, they are both technically in the same genre, which is cartooning. putting them together was extremely easy. not to mention that political cartoons will never die as a form of art media.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
the second I heard Opposites, I knew that politics would be an amazing and topical piece that I can use. So I started looking at political cartoons from the 50's and now, then after wanting more color in my piece I decided to go with pop art as an infuser.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
How pop art was produced and why it was produced and also how political cartoons are structured and how to convey political messages by hiding small easter eggs to convey a bit of deeper meaning.
The artwork I did is entirely influenced by the inspiration I had from my pieces, the second I heard "Opposites" I thought of politics, then to political cartoons, then to pop art. Roy's work really helped me see the potential in my idea.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The people who make political cartoons such as Herblock, and David Low, are very creative and strong headed people, who can turn a controversy into a joke within seconds. It really inspired me when researching this topic.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Political cartoons and pop art go hand in hand, they are both technically in the same genre, which is cartooning. putting them together was extremely easy. not to mention that political cartoons will never die as a form of art media.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
the second I heard Opposites, I knew that politics would be an amazing and topical piece that I can use. So I started looking at political cartoons from the 50's and now, then after wanting more color in my piece I decided to go with pop art as an infuser.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
How pop art was produced and why it was produced and also how political cartoons are structured and how to convey political messages by hiding small easter eggs to convey a bit of deeper meaning.
Bibliography
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Roy Lichtenstein.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 23 Oct. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Lichtenstein.
“The Steve Bell Cartoons Website.” Belltoons, http://belltoons.co.uk/.
“See More Editorial Cartoons at The Week.” The Week - All You Need to Know about Everything That Matters, https://www.theweek.com/cartoons.
“The Steve Bell Cartoons Website.” Belltoons, http://belltoons.co.uk/.
“See More Editorial Cartoons at The Week.” The Week - All You Need to Know about Everything That Matters, https://www.theweek.com/cartoons.