A Day in the Life - 200mm x 200mm Editorial Evaluation

I think this is probably my most successful piece in terms of visual communication and immediacy. I set out to represent the ideas of both and elephant in the room (the elephant being the problem of pollution that everyone in politics seems more than happy to ignore) and the all consuming issue of pollution itself. I feel that the composition of this piece works to the benefit of this idea as I tried to dedicate as much space as possible to the elephant and as little space as possible to the man, to suggest the giant glaring problem of pollution and how it is figuratively and literally bigger than all of us. As I've been trying to move my work away from fineliner based on both tutor guidance and my own desire to experiment and not define any of my work in any kind of set "style", I chose to use ink and black gouache in this piece. I feel that these materials better communicate the imagery of smoke as they are more fluid and free formed on the page. I also think that they create a much more solid image that looks more whole rather than a composite of lines like a fineliner drawing. I also think that the compressed stance (stance? Crouch? Not sure) of the elephant works well to illustrate my point as well, as pollution is an ever growing problem that will eventually reach a limit and become unfixable, there is only so much space on the planet to pollute, as there is only so much space on this page for the elephant to fill up. As I'm not incredibly experienced with wet media like gouache I think I definitely need to practice to improve my use of a brush and probably with other colours too. I feel that the gouache gets a bit splotchy and uneven in some areas so extra practice with the media would be my first personal thought on how to explore making this piece better if we did it again. I would also revise my design and execution (not like execution like death, as in drawing it) of the coughing man as I feel he is somewhat underdeveloped as most of the piece is taken up by the elephant. Maybe I could have experimented with different colours to accentuate his presence in the pieve, blues could have worked to suggest his naivety to the problem facing him. Overall I feel that this is probably my most successful editorial as it communicates my ideas the best and has allowed me to test out different materials for future briefs.