Editorial illustration
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For this Editorial illustration project, I have chosen to base my project on the theme of toxic masculinity, more specifically the epidemic of mental health problems for men in farming communities, which is something I believe toxic masculinity has a link to. In recent years, the mental health problems facing farmers and those in rural communities face has been brought to more attention than it has in the past. Organizations are attempting to bring awareness to the issue, so that the stigma surrounding seeking help can be decreased. In the farming community, appearing 'strong' and 'masculine' is the default attitude that men take. This causes farmers to become isolated as they put pride before asking for help when it comes to needing some help with tasks on the farm, and also needing help in taking care of their mental wellbeing.
My choice to concentrate on this topic was also motivated by the recent passing of my school friend Twm, who was only 21 years old.
A current events programme on s4c "Y Byd ar Bedwar" featured an episode about Twm, his family, and the overall issues surrounding mental health in farming industries.
This is a topic that I believe needs to be discussed and brought attention to, which is why I have chosen it for this project. For my research I have been looking at articles from sources such as Farmers weekly and farmers guide to try and understand the situation better, and also to find the specific article that I will be basing my project on.
https://www.farmersguide.co.uk/farmings-mental-health-epidemic/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-56071138
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/tragic-death-young-cyclist-spurs-21938085
I did some sketches to gain inspiration at the beginning of the project, using pictures taken from the farm. I also concentrated on the statistics regarding the issues that I want to explore in this project.
An idea that strikes me quite quickly when exploring ideas for the project is the idea that farmers often carry the weight of their problems on their own, which led me to thinking of the phrase 'carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders'. I imagined an idea of a farmer carrying the world instead of something that they would typically carry on their shoulder on the farm, such as hay, or a bag of animal feed. I did some more sketching in the sketchbook to explore these ideas, and come up with an early composition of what my piece will look like.
For the second week of our project, we were given three articles to experiment with when making an editorial illustration. One about diversity in skateboarding, one about how food can bring people together, and another about whales. I decided to concentrate on the skate and food articles to make some sketches / roughs in the template that we were given, and just explored different compositions and ideas on what I could incorporate into a resolved piece for one of the articles.
This is the resolved piece I made, using fineliners and winsor and newton alcohol markers. The image is intended to depict the increasing diversity in skateboarding communities by including people of different ethnicities and gender.
For the project, to gain more inspiration, I have been looking at artists who specialise in Editorial illustration as well as other types of illustration. Here are a few of these artists. I feel that I can see a lot of myself in the works created by these artists, in terms of the graphic style that they use, and the bold colours, as well as their use of images of people, which is what I concentrate most on in my work.
On the third week of this project, we needed to look at a few articles (The ones that I have inserted earlier on this page) and then do some sketching on ideas that were generated by reading the articles. Since the articles that I have been looking at include information on the mental health problems facing the farming industry, most of the imagery included in my sketches depict the loneliness and isolation faced by people in farming, including a sketch about being outside working on Christmas day while everyone else is enjoying together, and also a sketch about the concept of 'smiling depression', when a person appears to be fine, when really they are not.
This is one of the sketches about Christmas, that I then developed into a more resolved piece which can be seen below.
More sketches done in my sketchbook exploring composition and ideas.
I asked my Dad, who is a farmer, to take a few photos in his work clothes carrying animal feed so that I could then use that picture for my final piece in this brief.
I decided to paint the final piece for the brief in gouache (using alcohol markers to add extra shades and colour). I felt that this would be a nice opportunity for me to use a different media and create images away from the images that I have been making recently that include bold lines that define the drawing. After painting the main figure, I decided not to paint a background for the piece, even though that was my original intention. I felt that the clothes themselves show that the person in the picture is a farmer, and that maybe a background would have distracted from the main image.
After finishing the final piece for this brief, I used a fineliner to make an outline for the piece, so that I could use it on photoshop to colour in.
We used pinterest to look ar different editorial pieces, and pick out pieces that have colours that interest us, and then make a colour palette for each of the pieces. We used photoshop's colour sampler tool to pick the colours that we liked the most, and then applied those to the palettes. We then used those palettes to influence our own pieces. The change in colours completely changes the mood of the piece. The example of the piece edited below with bright colours make the piece a bit more contemporary than the original that was painted with gouache. The colours take away much of the traditional farming earthy colours that is included in the original painting, but I believe it leaves the overall essence of the piece.
The pictures above display all the articles from the group printed out together on the studio wall. This project has given me a chance to explore another route that I could potentially go down in the illustration industry. Seeing the drawing in its final form next to the headline, and the article itself shows the effectiveness of the drawing, and that I have successfully made something that represents the article it accompanies. If I was to do something differently next time, I think that experimenting with the font and colours of the headline, as well as further experimentation with the colours of the piece. I also think that exploring a background behind the main figure in the piece would also be beneficial, to add more farming elements and suggest some of the topics mentioned in the article.