A couple of my favourite illustrations I drew were those involving a saxophone. The song 'Harder than you think' was full of sax sounding sounds payed by a synth. I then also wanted to emphasise in the same illustration that the songs being played by this instrument were of black power, and so I illustrated this in two ways. The first involves a sax, with the black power symbol floating out (fist) as their music is about empowering the black community. And in the second the evidence of this in the lyrics 'Fight the power' is escaping from the saxophone.
This is another idea I had using simpler illustration but using the same message, However I feel the style does not do the rap culture enough justice, and deserves something more out there and creative.
I created the next illustration via both inspiration from the song lyrics and the 50 best hip hop record covers I had seen. 'Wit slavery, lynching , and them drugs infiltrated' Here public enemy speak of how particularly the black slaves were treated as slaves and wrongly hung. This can be seen on the album 'Black Bastards' by KMD.
I wanted to think of a new way other than an idea of hangman which I could initiate this idea without being too direct and gruesome. I then began to think of other ways in which people could 'hang'. One of the first things I thought of was someone hanging from apparatus such as monkey bars and so i chose to illustrate this below.
One of my other strong ideas I had was to involve strong black leaders in my designs, making them look like they were taking part in the creation of this music and furthermore evoking the idea of black power. I chose to start with an obvious black leader Obama, and so I went on a search for an image I could work with that I thought would work well with the song.
I found this image and thought It was a great visual representation of the line in the song 'throw yo hands up in the air' which I have drawn below.
I then went on to pursue another idea of a famous black leader. Martin Luther King, whom spent his adult years trying to lift the apartheid and impose freedom for the black race. I wanted to try and include an illustration of a leader being involved in the song without the use of literal lyrics. Instead I took a lyric from the song and turned it into an illustration 'Gangster boogie on two turntables'. Below a highly styled illustration of MLK is featured playing on the said turn tables. I would however If i chose to pursue this idea for a final piece, like to use a more life like looking drawing of MLK as above pictured like Obama.
The idea I had below was to create a somewhat sarcastic piece using the line from the song 'Check the facts expose those cats who pose as heros and take advantage of blacks'. I wanted to take the face of someone who could be considered a racist white leader and superimpose them onto supermans body (the hero) I did not however want to take this piece to the extreme and use anybody too serious in opposition to the black race, and so I found inspiration from another politically charged artist for a character I could use.
Lupe Fiasco's track 'Words I never said' details how Rush Limbaugh a political commentator and conservative radio host working in America is a racist. 'And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth, Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist'
'Limbaugh has been noted for making controversial race-related statements with regard to African-Americans. He has drawn connections between African-American appearance and criminality on several occasions, once opining that all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resembled Jesse Jackson, and another time that "the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons." While employed as what he describes as an "insult-radio" DJ, he used a derogatory racial stereotype to characterize a black caller he could not understand, telling the caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back." In March 2010, Limbaugh used the similarity of recently resigned Rep. Eric Massa's surname to the slavery-era African-American pronunciation of "master" to make a pun on the possibility that Gov. David Paterson, New York's first African-American governor, would pick Massa's replacement: "Let's assume you're right [caller]. So, David Paterson will become the massa who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa's place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting."
Limbaugh has asserted that African-Americans, in contrast with other minority groups, are "left behind" socially because they have been systematically trained from a young age to hate America and due to the welfare state.' wikipedia.
I have therefore illustrated this sarcastic remark below, however I feel this may be too serious and politically charged to include on a final design.
I went back to look into the symbol for the black power fist and created some more variations as this had been my favourite motif I had found so far. Below I have drawn up the first on a large scale, and placed a small tattoo like image of an aim, this can be seen as part of what makes the current public enemy logo.
I then used the same design ideas and created another variation. This time I have taken away the tattoo idea and used the design as a continuous pattern in the background.
For the last of my favourite design ideas I again decided to use the first motif, and further play on the idea of power. When looking at images of the black power symbol I came across an image similar to this one:
I then began to think about how I could make this image look more powerful, and Drew the fist coming out of a suit. As suits usually have connotations with powerful business men. To then make the cover seem more urban and of the hip hop/rap genre, I pictured the figure wearing large headphones that are usually associated with the hip hop genre.
I then picked the five that I wanted to take into illustrator for my possible designs:
(left)
When thinking about what colours to do the saxophone and fist piece in, I wanted to choose colours with high contrasts so that they would accentuate each other and appear strong. As colours used in this genre are typically bright and vibrant. Due to this decision I chose to use the colours blue and yellow on a black background.
One thing that I had always wanted to try in illustrator was the building of tone, by creating layers using one colour and adjusting the tone.
First I began to draw up the saxophone:
Seeing how successful the technique had been I began to work upon the fist. I really took into consideration what parts would need shading, which parts would appear darkest and where the light would hit. I also used a strong outline to make the illustrations appear more cartoonized and appear to mould with the genre.
As said before I then created the arm of the fist so that it would appear to flow out of the saxophone, as a genie would from a bottle. This was to symbolise the idea of the strong sax playing a song of black power.
I then moved on to create the next black power variation as I already had the stencil of a fist i had created to work with.
For this variation I wanted to change the colour of the fist to create a bolder pairing against the black, therefore I chose red. I took the fist stencil which I already had from the previous design, and changed each of the tones in the hand to a range of reds.
I then changed the background to black and added the pattern influenced by the original public enemy logo on top:
I am very pleased with the way in which this design has come out, I like the combination of colours and that that they represent the genre well, and I also like the continuos pattern in the background, which I find complements the fist rather than overtakes it.
Following on from these two variations I went onto my third fist design:
I did however want to play with a more subtle combination of colours to see if I could evoke power without having to use strong colours therefore I decided to keep the design to black and white. I also decided that instead of using the usual pen tool, that I would use an ink brush for more subtle, soft line.
When I had drawn the piece up in illustrator I had decided to add extra tone in grey, using a watercolour brush which I thought that I liked.
However when editing the piece and grouping it, I accidently transformed the whole piece to an ink brush.
More so I found that I enjoyed using this ink brush for tone as it appeared more subtle and this is what I was aiming for. The finished product also seemed to have some sort of graffiti ease to it, as if it had been painted in few brush strokes.
The the next Obama inspired design, I first took the Image I had found online, and drew around it in illustrator using the pen tool.
I was then going to take the image out of digital and start editing it by hand, using water colour to create tone, and creating the appearance of a hand drawn speech bubble and type, however, After briefly using brushes in my last design, and having relatively no experience with them. I was keen to learn and so I decided to leave the design in illustrator and experiment with different water colour brushes.
I have used to a more bristly brush to recreate the texture of his hair.
And used a traditional watercolour brush to build tone for the rest of his body.
I then added the speech bubble, drawing it will the pencil tool, and adding the line 'Throw yo hands up in the air' using a font that appeared to have been written by hand.
My last design experimented with colour in an even more subtle way:
Although I had created this illustration for my thumbnails, I had said before that I wanted to create a piece with more realism, alike that that of the Obama piece I produced. I therefore again, found an image of MLK online and began to trace around it using the pen tool. However I found during the process that the illustration was not going the way I had planned, the design did not have the recognisable characteristics of MLK and so I chose to abandon this idea.
Instead I chose to scan in my original illustration and began to redraw it in illustrator using the same ink brush I had used for the fist and suit combination:
I also decided that I would have liked to invert the colours and edit them to white on black so that the colours would more so match the hip hop culture, however I found this colour combination to be unsuccessful as it distorted the appearance of the face too much.
Turning the image back to its original colours I then worked on the arms of the MLK character. i decided to again resonate the idea of black power, and drew him holding his fist in the air.
the 5 finished designs as I tool them into the crit:
Once we entered the crit we were informed that we should leave knowing which design we would want to submit.
We sat in groups of around 5/6 people and discussed our ideas/ design decisions and were then given advice on which design our peers thought we should submit.
This is the feedback that I was given:
-The design where I have used red and black could be too obvious, referring to the repetitiveness of the pattern in the background which is very much like public enemy's current logo.
- The blue and yellow piece is strong however, the sounds in the song are not sax they are horns, trumpets in particular, and so it was suggested I could try and change this.
- The black and white (fist and suit) design I had created was unusual and something that had never been seen before. My group also liked the way I had used brushes.
-The MLK piece was too light to represent hip hop and would have needed brighter colours.
Coming out of the crit I knew straight away which piece I wanted to submit.
Although the piece with the red fist and pattern was my favourite before I went in, I understood the comments about the pattern being too obvious and so I have decided to submit my second favourite, and design favourited by my peers, the suit and fist.
Although the piece with the red fist and pattern was my favourite before I went in, I understood the comments about the pattern being too obvious and so I have decided to submit my second favourite, and design favourited by my peers, the suit and fist.
My design after submission up on talenthouse!
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