For those who like to know some of the references and inspiration used please go to page 2. If you prefer to figure it out yourself, don’t.

Propaganda How-To:  

Octopus Propaganda:

Misc:

(Click image to enlarge)

This weeks Illustration Friday topic was “homage”, so here as a homage to one of my favourite authors, Kelly Link. The illustration is based on “Catskins”¹. However, I did take a few privileges with the illustration and it isn’t completely true to the story nor does it illustrate any particular scene in it. The aberration is mostly the cat costume, and that two of the characters in it are one and the same, but I wanted to show both aspects of the character. Anyway, go buy the book and read it. Especially if you like zombies.

I actually quite like this sketch and plan on making it into a painting when I have the time. So highly unlikely to occur in the next couple of months.

1. In “Magic For Beginners”, Small Beer Press, 2005 Harper Perennial, 2007 [↩]

The Illustration Friday topic this week is/was “Pet Peeves”. I saw it as an opportunity to develop a sketch for the Vulgar Army project. It just happened the Illustration Friday topic was ideal.

My pet peeves are too numerous to recount. At the moment, it is generic by-numbers-octopus-propaganda and political cartoons. Not that I object to octopuses being used in propaganda/political cartoons. There have been some very imaginitive ones such as: L. D. Bradley, “Before the Trojan Horse is admitted, The Puzzled Citizen will have to be shown a little more fully, . .” Chicago Daily News, 3 February 1909 and the Harper’s Weekly cover Oct 6, 1900 showing the “Hunting of the Octopus” (Edit: “Hunting of the Octopus” by William Allen Rogers).

It is just, they are typically:

1) Write names of issues, organisations etc on limbs

2) Put head (or hat) of whomever you are trying to lampoon on octopus. Alternatively, tattoo their name across octopus forehead

3) Involve maps or globes.

Which isn’t to say these techniques don’t work. Take the Trojan Horse and the Hunting the Octopus. Both use labels to show what they are trying to represent. But they don’t just dump the octopus in the middle of the page, on a map or globe and stick someones head on it.

Edit (23rd March 3.30pm):

Links
David Hardy (April 2007) Octopuses and the NRA
TONMO.com (2003-2008) Octopuses & Propaganda
Quotidian Hell (May 2007) Quotidian Hell

This is the image is the source for the title of this project. Can you guess why it is called the “vulgar” army? Can you, can you?

This is a is a pen & ink and acrylic on ~5?×7? stretched calico canvas. I wanted it to look like a battered post card so I scuffed it with a piece of sandpaper. This is one of those images that I went, “drat, I ruined it” after I added the text. Oh well, I still like it.

Needed to do some illustration as it is desperately neglected at the moment as I try to finish up my thesis. The Illustration Friday topic this week provided an excuse. For some reason this is what the topic “Tales and Legends” conjured in my head. Playing with a different style too, compared to my usual stuff. Not sure what the story is: Is the rat stealing the egg? Is the death-skull koi aiding the rat or trying to eat it or steal the egg too? Pretty quick illustration (for me, I am a slow drawer), maybe 30min on the sketch, and 30 min in Photoshop to colour it. Kind of like this style, though I think the method will require a lot more refining.