Political Response

The idea of this project was to create a response to a political or social issue that we cared deeply about. I responded the the use of tear gas at the border, that was thrown on a group of people that wanted to enter the country. I used watercolor paint and a fine point pen to do my work.

I started out with a lot of sketches for a lot of different issues. I’ve almost always been involved in political issues (my family keeps the news on from dawn to dusk) as well as social ones. This summer I volunteered with Planned Parenthood to keep abortion safe and legal. I was having a lot of trouble choosing, but I settled on this because it was so recent. First I sketched out the work, which had a reference photo of a migrant woman and her two daughters fleeing from the tear gas. I put clouds of gas behind them, and made a barbed wire fence visible in the background. Above the scene, I put a somewhat realistic (I tried to make it look like him) image of Trump, saying things about the attack. Finally, behind Trump is a direct excerpt from the United Nations Charter (Article II) which addresses the use of violence or threats upon a foreign territory. I went over this with a light layer of watercolor, and then with a black fine point pen.

After working very hard on this poster, the final piece delivered the message I wanted in the way that I wanted. The clear but not actually drawn border between the scene at he bottom of the page and the portrait at the top was well done. Despite the two different images the price is still unified and has a good use of space. There a couple of things I would like to tweak though. First, my use of color was below par on this project; the whole thing looks very light, and none of the colors really go together. I would want to unify and use wayyy more value the next time to make it more dramatic. The artwork is at average strength and displays my skills very well, but I could use more value and a better use of color.