Editorial Cartoon

In Her Roost is a reflection on the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court, and the actions she could potentially take. This piece depicts a harpie, with the head of Mrs. Barrett ripping a paper titled 'Roe V. Wade,' the supreme court case that legalized abortion. I chose to depict Mrs. Barrett as a harpie because of the Harpies significance in greek mythology, and also because her nose is rather similar to a beak. In greek myths, Harpies carried offenders to be eaten by the Erinyes, similar to the way that a judge would hand down a sentence. I think that because a harpie is kind of a frightening character, this depiction of Justice Barrett is rather fitting, because the things she could potentially destroy, such as abortion rights, is very frightening. Personally I believe that repealing Roe v. Wade would be a mistake, and I believe this idea is visually evident in this work.

To create this piece I used black Micron technical pens of varying sizes as well as a Pentel Pocket Brush. To create more of smooth transition between shadows and highlights I chose to leave my graphite sketches below the final inks and I added to serve as shadow once finished. I thinking the choice to leave the graphite in was a good one. It creates a real sense of dirtiness of the feathers that I quite like, and a sense of flow when you view it up close.

After I completed my thumbnail sketches, I jumped onto some bristol, which is a great paper for illustrations such as these. With a 2B graphite pencil I sketched in the basic forms, before adding in a more loose lines, which get me excited to add inks for some reason. Then, I began the arduous process of carefully inking this piece. In In Her Roost I chose to use a sketchy style because I felt like it captured the texture of feathers quite well, and I am quite pleased with the results I got. I would use the edge of the technical pen (I know it isn't good for them but I like the effect you get) to loosely rough in the line work, repeating until I liked the weight of the line. Once finished with the line work, I used a Pentel Pocket brush to fill in the dark background. To finish, I used a 6B pencil to darken up areas I felt needed shadow. Overall I am happy with this piece, but if I could just change one thing I would: I feel like the lettering in the banner isn't very well done, and in my opinion it will hurt my chances in this competition.