Close to Death, Closer to Tears

We interrupt your scheduled programming to announce a new brief: an editorial illustration. Stop what you're doing and produce a visual response to this article!

Okay, I may have misread the deadline as two days later than reality, so expect things to be a little rushed. My impression of the article was that it was trying to argue drawing is a necessary tool to comprehend and respond to the external world. I wanted to try and convey the idea of drawing as an enlightening practice in the image I created, and I settled on the design of a pencil as a motif for exploring this concept.

After experimenting with a graphite stick and pencil, I settled on ink as a medium, though I opted to draw with a blunt instrument instead of a brush to make the line more raw. I was inspired by the landscapes of Escher, Noble and Supermundane, who to me all seem to depict the relationship with the artist to the outside world. With this in mind I set out to create some complete sketches.

This is the first image I completed, and I'm really happy with it, but it doesn't fit with the dimensions I had to used and I never got around to adding colour.

This is another concept I had that seemed pretty cool, but the execution is really lackluster. I think it could have worked if it were much cleaner and more intricate. Again, it doesn't really work with the portrait orientation, so I moved on to another concept.

This is the first attempt of my final image. The hands are kind of cool, but the composition is all wrong. I moved on pretty quickly from this.

This is my second attempt. The hands look really interesting in this one, kind of a Quentin Blake aesthetic. I actually like it more than the final image, but it still feels pretty sparse so I decided to give it one more try.

This is the final version. I thought about adding colour, but I decided monochrome would be a better when viewed against black text and a white backdrop. I don't know. I'm not really pleased with this, but editoral work is always really short notice so I guess it's something you have to be ready for. I just wish I could have made that centre glow less digital; I had to edit the scan to make it appear correctly because there was a shadow over it from the paper going crinkly. 

If I could go over and redo it, I'd explore my other concepts more, because I think there's a lot of missed potential in them. I guess sometimes you have to stab yourself repeatedly in the chest to churn out something for the deadline.