Exercise : World Affairs

This exercise required a contemporary news event illustration implementing satire as it’s focus.

Looking around at the many news stories (some of which are ludicrous in their trivial quality), the obvious overarching one is still the war in the Ukraine with Russia. Although the narrative changes daily as the conflict progresses in one way or another, the actual essence of the reasoning hasn’t and it’s this which I though might make for a decent visual commentary.

Rather than focus on any single event of the conflict, I chose to try create something which would involve the major players in the crisis.

This would require more than just one caricature too, which was challenging in itself, but if I could pull it off would make for something a little more engaging.

THE IDEA

I began with a mind map to pick out the qualities of each player in the image : this would be Putin, Zelenksky, Xi, Lukashenko and Biden.

Initially I considered bringing in Kin Jong Un from the DPRK just because he’s been in the limelight again causing mischief with spy satellite launches, but North Korea aren’t major players in the eastern European power struggle at the moment so I left him out here.

The main things here were the strongest symbolic images which I could use for metaphor. The first place to begin was looking at each respective country’s national symbols, so for example Russia is commonly depicted as a bear, America a golden Eagle etc.

After some work on the symbolism and thoughts on depiction of each leader, I created a sketch of the layout I really wanted to portray.

CARICATURES

generally speaking these proved nerve wracking! I couldn’t afford any time noodling with a pencil trying endlessly to get these perfect (I probably wouldn’t want to anyway, I’m of the opinion it’s better these days to just get on with something half the time, and it seems to work out OK mostly anyway). These were drawn straight into a sheet of A4 each from a reference photograph (links at the end) and interpreted as I went along.

The Zelensky caricature was drawn quite a bit smaller than the rest, which lead to a different line quality : this was related to a greater problem which would come around to bite me later, which I’ll get to in the conclusion paragraph.

I started out with a caricature of each of the leaders I wanted to portray in the image. Putin was relatively easy, he has quite a furtive face generally in my opinion and looks rather smug and sanctimonious somehow, shrinking his eyes and pulling them closer together reinforces this, he also looks as though he’s had some surgery or botox jabs, so those cheeks add to the innate look of general mischief.

Lukashenko was next, a bullish character often captured with a manic expression of rage..

China’s president, Xi Jinping has a curious fixed expression most of the time, he looks strangely innocuous and quite pleasant, always wearing a faint smile which I suspect belies a sinister and ruthless nature in some respects.

Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky has a bit of a neutral face which sometimes appears grave and quite stern, but he has fortitude and as a former actor, humour too.

America’s president joe Biden is generally portrayed as a bit bungling at times, and is often not perceived as one of the strongest leaders the United States has had, but he’s acknowledged as being likeable and intelligent. I chose the slightly bungling side of him here as it was fitting for my intention in the image.

THE ILLUSTRATION

PUTIN

The main thrust of Putin’s imperialistic desires lies in his self portrayal as a Peter the Great type character, so the thinking is presenting him in a suit of armour like his historical namesake. There’s an element of Napoleon syndrome happening here, Putin is often depicted as someone of diminutive proportions, yet with huge aspirations. Here he’s holding the former USSR flag, the hammer and sickle at the heart of his ideals for empiric and Stalin-esque conquest. Behind him is the tail of Xi’s Chinese dragon with it’s tail firmly pointing to the west ; not particularly with land conquest in mind, but aspirational eyes on the West regardless, whether commercial or otherwise.. Putin holds on to chains in a perceived domination through imperial ideals (more with Belarus) and commercial and trade ideals with China as a result of Western sanctions imposed during the war with Ukraine.

LUKASHENKO

The Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko holds a rather odd position in what is regarded as the last European dictatorship : he relies on Russian money to fund the country in many facets, therefore he has to be seen as being a close ally of Russian, although apparently Putin holds disdain for him personally, although anytime Russia is at odds with the country Lukashenko’s opinions swing to the pro western democracies. His public facing stance is one which is firmly allied with Russian however, the use of the country for Russia to launch offences against Ukraine from the north and purportedly for nuclear arsenal mobilisation and stationing are two such examples.

Instead of portraying Lukashenko as the Bison which is the national symbol of Belarus, here he is a bear, firmly in Russia’s grip as a barrier between NATO allies and aspirations in the west. He is shredding the NATO flag which Zelensky holds, a warning that Ukraine joining the alliance will be seen as direct aggression with Russia and her allies.

XI JINPING

China’s Xi Jinping is portrayed here as a dragon, although China’s more typical national symbol is the Panda bear. The perception here is that Russia has a perceived dominance over China through moving raw material trade to that country in the face of sanctions from the West (Oil, rare earth minerals and coal for example). The dragons tail pointed west behind Putins back however points to a more neutral stance in the face of growing capitalism with the US, and intentions of domination through investment in the west. (In reality, China is the more dominant creature here as they stay somewhat neutral with their stance between Russian and the west, regardless of their own imperialistic intentions in the pacific).

ZELENSKY

Ukraine’s president Zelensky is presented here in a smaller stature, not cowering by any means from Belarus but being intimidated by the Lukashanko bear, slashing at the NATO flag in one hand, while proudly and defiantly holding the Ukrainian national flag in the other. Most recently, NATO have fully offered the acceptance of any country to join the alliance, although with the an attack on one member is an attack on all core tenet in place, this would be disastrous at this stage in the conflict in raising the stakes of a nuclear retaliation from Russia. The Belarussian response is one of disdain for the whole enterprise and it’s an extension of the same from Russia.

BIDEN

US president Joe Biden is represented here as Uncle Sam, with US funds flowing from his pockets into the arms pot of the Ukraine (America has supplied the most in terms of weaponry, with the allied European countries giving the most in combined humanitarian and emergency aid funds). While he’s on the run from a conflict involving Russia and China, he’s still keeping China sweet by throwing Xi’s dragon a capitalism bone and running ever further to the middle east in terms of oil reliance which has now been reduced since the introduction of oil and gas supply sanctions with Russian and the push for self and other-reliance for the largest consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.

Nuclear stockpiles can be seen sitting in menacing readiness in the east and the west.

CONCLUSION

This was a fun project, but also a baptism of fire in some ways. The first issue I encountered was the actual drawing of the caricatures. I believe drawing each one out was a safe bet which paid off, had I decided to draw each of these in situ on a single sheet of paper I would have been more inclined to want to sketch out the whole thing and there was a risk I could have ruined one or more of the likenesses. (I think I achieved a decent likeness which each one, the Zelensky one was a challenge and I felt this was a bit weak)

In drawing each caricature separately though, I introduced the problem of scale. To draw this out and match in the shading I had applied would have meant using a rather large piece of paper which I didn’t have. My next best bet was to scan the heads and finish the rest of the image digitally. I was a bit reluctant to do this really for two reasons, one being that I quite like that hand shaded look for satirical cartoons and the other that I would have to try match the scale of the scans with line etc. This in itself lead to a ridiculously large digital image in photoshop which was almost a gigabyte in size on disc. It had so many layers in the end that I had to carefully name each one just to keep track.

Finishing this digitally for me was a chore in the end, I ended up noodling with the image which was something I wouldn`t do drawing it on paper these days, and I think I lost some of that nice immediacy in the digital finishing. I would have opted to paint this as well using watercolours had I finished it on paper.

My takeaway from this would have to be one of massively simplifying the caricatures into way fewer lines and trying to capture likenesses that way on a smaller scale : or making something with fewer caricatures combined into one image.

I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much, I thoroughly enjoyed drawing the caricatures!

Whether it stands up as a piece of satirical work though is another matter.