Exercise - World affairs

The brief is to create a satirical cartoon. I've never done that before, I have opinions but I don't usually share them. 

Why is it acceptable for us to have nuclear arms but not North Korea or Iran? I don't support their nuclear armament but are we really more responsible? Earlier in the year the BBC news reported North Korea's nuclear programme immediately followed by something about weapons in the UK with no comment on the irony of it all.

I started by representing the bombs with mushrooms, then turned them to mushroom clouds which I made using potato printing.

If you look at the flags for America and North Korea you see that America has 50 stars (not 52 as I wrote in my sketchbook) and North Korea only has one.

I saw an opportunity to replace the stars with nuclear bombs.

This is too subtle, I don't think that anyone would get it.

This was another idea from my sketchbook.

Using Photoshop I coloured in the figures and added bombs made from a single black paper cutout and repeated.

The digital colour doesn't work and the bomb on Trumps lap is probably a bit too pointed.....

To get a more coherent image I redrew the figures and reapplied the bombs.

Though I added some highlights to the bombs so that you can see the layering better. The action is floating in space so I painted  a yellow background and added streaks of red to represent the potential of the actions.

The faces now look unnaturally pale so I added colour.

With all the colour the graphite drawings of the suits look a bit out of place and the face colours are a bit bright but it is supposed to be a bit of a caricature. Should the bombs have some racking to support them? My intention was to keep things simple but the picture is already way more complicated than it should be, the message is in danger of getting lost.

Interestingly, the person that I showed this cartoon to thought that the Kim Jong Un figure was being cheeky or provocative to the figure with the bombs, how much was that my poor imagery and how much him bringing his own prejudices to what he saw?

Some more sketches, mixed up with drawings of a seated figure who has nothing to do with this project.

 And a slightly different interpretation, this time I've tried to keep it really simple and not overwork it.

Or with an explanation.

On reflection I'm not happy with the smaller figure. I redrew some different versions.

and replaced him.

It's better but does it still mean what I started out trying to say? I went back to my sketchbook and the drawings of people waving flags.

With a bit of computer manipulation;

It's still not right and I don't think that its going in the right direction, but there is a bit of me that is satisfied that I have managed to use the flags even if in the wrong image.

Reflection

I've got 3 different versions here:

I think that the pencil drawing is clearest and easier to understand, though the flags have more punch.
It's difficult to show them all to someone and not have them interpret the pictures as a group. My first reviewer liked the flags as the best image but thought that he understood the pencil cartoon better. His interpretation "Little guy North Korea vs big powerful America with its arsenal of weapons." "Worlds not fair" so I didn't quite hit the mark.
My second reviewer though that the bottom two are stronger though she suggested a crop for the first one to give it more impact.

Maybe this version is better? I think that this image is overworked. She thought that the pencil cartoon was predictable and overall preferred the flag cartoon but suggested a smaller North Korean flag.

(not sure that the quality of the North Korean flag stands up to a full view)

Her interpretation was "they are about USA and North Korea having a kiddy fight over nuclear weapons"

None of my reviewers saw the cartoons as I intended though their interpretations were in parallel to what I intended. It's been an interesting exercise and increases my respect for people who do this for a living. It also makes me wonder whether I read their cartoons as they intended.