Roman Macrae Illustration

  Looking into current wars I thought about the recent tension between North Korea and the USA. However while I was researching I found quite a 'fun' article about how North Korea have been militarizing dolphins. I found this quite funny and thought it could make for a very fun illustration but I think it would also highlight the absurdness of North Korea. North Korea secretly training dolphins for WAR - 'Human swimmers cannot compete'  (Link) Looking into the more serious side of North Korea I looked into the worries of North Korea's growing nuclear power. The Unthinkable: What Would Happen If North Korea Nuked Los Angeles? In this article it humors the idea of the possibility of nuclear war with the USA and also talks about the sheer amount of destruction and chaos that would occur. I really like this article just because of how weird it is to read about. The article almost feels 'happy-go-lucky' which is really strange and almost sinister to read. I have ...

  When looking into more civil wars I looked in the Yemen Crisis. I found some recent opinionated articles that looked at how the new Biden-Harris administration should make ending the conflict a ‘priority for both strategic and humanitarian reasons’. I liked how this article had a focus on the recent news of the election and gave a very positive and proactive stance. Ending the Yemen war is both a strategic and humanitarian imperative  (Link) In the article it also highlights the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organisation and also describes Prince Muhammed Bin Salman as having ‘no military training’ and having ‘engaged in multiple human rights violations’. I do think this article almost idolises the USA as being the only thing that can stop the war and doesn’t touch on their involvement in it enough. I do want to perhaps look more into the effect of war on civilians and I think Yemen is a perfect example of this. Looking at the countless photos and videos of the destruction ...

  https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/23/the-yemen-civil-war-arms-bonanza/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/11/16/ending-the-yemen-war-is-both-a-strategic-and-humanitarian-imperative/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/opinion/armenia-azerbaijan-peace-deal.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/19/ceasefire-agreement-azerbaijan-great-risks-armenia https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/fragile-ceasefire/article33119969.ece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0H3TJchQ4U&t=33s https://globalriskinsights.com/2020/11/north-koreas-recent-nuclear-advances-what-are-the-implications-for-european-security/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/rethinking-north-korea-how-bad-would-it-be-to-let-kim-jong-un-keep-his-nuclear-weapons https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1359809/North-Korea-news-Kim-Jong-Un-war-dolphins-military-satellite-images-world-war-3-latest https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/29239/the...

 

  Researching around the topic of War and Conflict I looked heavily into civil wars and I looked into the conflict of Armenia and Azerbaijan. I came across this article in the New York Times which had some language that I found really interesting. In the article it talks about how the conflict has 'frozen' and refers to it as a 'frozen conflict' which I think could be made into a very interesting illustration. As well as this it talked about how this was only temporary so there's this tension that I think could be used in an illustration, perhaps over a two page spread. A Quick End to a Dangerous War  (Link) This conflict also presents ideas of foreign intervention, religious conflict and the affects of war. The images used in the article were quite powerful with images depicting buildings on fire and giant tank vehicles. These gave me visual direction and also gave me even more ideas about tension, one of them being people being frozen in time or in blocks of ice t...

  4 – Magazine Topic/Genre (discovering   magazines on your personal interests) PUNK was a magazine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom in 1975. It was a vehicle to talk about the underground punk scene in New York at the time. The magazine uses a combination of illustrations and  photography. Each issue is vibrant and striking and I love how each of them looks.  My favorite cover is this one of Patti Smith illustrated by Steve Tailor who was a recurring illustrator in the magazine. I love how bold and vibrant it is and it almost feels like a comic book cover which I love.

  3 – Magazine Design (page layouts, type, photograph and illustration) Kinfolk is a magazine focused  on bringing more and more nature into peoples lives. The way that their covers are laid out and the colours used brings a very calming and soft feeling. The use of bright colours  like white paired with very soft lighted photography brings a calming affect.  I think that this way of setting out the covers is intentional to create this very clean and simple look.

  2 – Editorial Image Making Processes Olivier Kugler’s editorial work is something that I am interested in. His work is usually made by taking photos he has taken at events and then drawn them in hi sketchbook. Then he makes them not digital pieces and layers different drawing onto each other to make interesting compositions. He also uses text and titles over his drawings to create interesting but informative pieces. Like in this piece he did for ‘Escaping Wars and Waves’ in Harpers Magazine.

  1 – Editorial Illustration Ideas and Concepts  John Hendrix is an Editorial Illustrator who has used this technique of incorporating the text into the illustration in interesting and engaging ways that relate and add to the opinion being shown. Some examples of this in his work is the Alcalde Magazine piece he did on fracking and a piece he did for EcoTrust seen below.

  My project was centred around homelessness. I wanted to bring light to real stories making a personal response to the problem. I started my project looking into a wide range of research and then I honed down on a more specific and relevant information. I used a personal connection (my Mum) who has had real experience in the field of homelessness and have used her stories of people to make my three final pieces. I used different colour pallets to show different points of views as well as different stories. During my time with this project it made me realise how bad the problem is, walking around Bristol to gather photographs and information I was saddened by the sheer amount of people sleeping rough. When doing my final pieces I ran into one trouble with the text I was putting over my drawings. I took inspiration from the illustrator Olivier Kugler and I think you can see that in my final pieces, however I think I did not succeed as much as I could have in trying to find the same ...

  Right click the images to open in a new tab for higher quality. EVALUATION

  For my response to Louise Bourgeois' I created 2 black lino cut prints. The two being a flip on Bourgeois' personally relationship of a Mother and a Daughter, with it instead being my relationship with my Father and me as a Son. The first piece I did is a very personal print that explains my relationship with my Father. It depicts a pair of lungs slowly deteriorating on one side into parts and more importantly butterflies. My Father has emphysema which is a disease that effects the lungs meaning my Dad cant really do much physical activities and this piece is basically how I feel that I know that he will be gone one day and I dont know if I have been right to him, I feel that the butterflies represent memories that I'll never have being flown away as he starts to leave. My second print is just a variation of the first print using a butterfly to show a set of lungs.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351 https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bourgeois-louise/ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-maman-t12625 https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2018.1409995 https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2017.1352138 https://www.moma.org/s/lb/curated_lb/themes/spiders.html https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-maman-t12625 https://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80577 https://www.theartstory.org/artist/duchamp-marcel/artworks/ https://www.theartstory.org/artist/hesse-eva/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Girls http://indigoalison.blogspot.com/2009/03/now-thats-what-i-call-style.html http://mainetoday.com/maine_art/documentary-delves-tragic-life-influential-art-eva-hesse/ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/10997 https://www.artsy.net/artwork/max-ernst-the-king-playing-with-the-queen ...

  For my project I have decided to do Homelessness, a persistent problem that surrounds us.I have chosen this because of my personal connection to the problem, my mother , a homelessness officer, sparked my interest into the issue and has made me realize how awful it is. After all my research I have realized that what needs to be said about homelessness has been said many times over, so I think what is important for my work is it to be a personal response. In my three final pieces what I am aiming to do is to record different  real stories that I've gathered from my Mother who is an Homelessness Officer, using different lighting, colour and angles to show my different 'points of views'. I will use images that I have taken to compile illustrations in an almost collage style. I want to highlight the problem of homelessness in the UK. The illustrations will be digital as I think that it will be the best way of creating images that pop out, using the references I have taken I w...