Boiling World

 

After learning to draw figures out of my head under the tuition of Paul Birchall, I decided to make use of my new found skill and create a drawing that involved figures.

The topic of Global Warming is current and so it seemed a good idea to put my drawing skill to use highlighting the problem through some form of allegory.

The Drawing

I decided to depict the planet steaming, with the fires of industry below adding heat. The inhabitants fall off as their ‘habitats’ become untenable.

In the clouds over the World the deities look on with sadness whilst Gaia raises her arms in despair.

In the background on the left another tree falls to the demands of the modern world, and on the right the ‘tree hugger’ vainly tries to protect something of the natural world.

The foreground is occupied by us, that’s you and me! On the left are those who are enjoying life, singing, dancing, and socialising. To their right and advancing on the viewer are the great disaffected, all protesting about something, usually couched in terms of I/WE WANT with no thought for the costs their demands imply.

At the head of the advancing crowd is their leader/politician, soliciting votes and support, whilst ‘kicking the can down the road’!

And naturally it will all end in tears. That dark shadow in the foreground is the cliff that humanity is marching towards!

Some thoughts

This is a continuation of my ‘postcards’ experience that Paul Birchall took us through in a UCT Summer School a few years ago. On this occasion it came straight out of my head.

It’s a bit of a pessimistic view of the state of the natural world, and it places the blame squarely on the shoulders of humanity.

In fact for most of the past 600 million years the world has been considerably warmer than it is at the moment. The really scary thought is that Global warming might be a natural phenomenon; and nothing we can do will stop it. We humans cannot survive in the warm conditions that have at times prevailed!

My process

Creating this image took quite a long elapsed time; I worked on it for a few hours and then left it for weeks at a time. I almost ‘doodled’ some of it. I really found it a relaxing, unpressured experience. I would sit with a pencil and putty rubber, regard the image and decide what and where it needed attention. Over time it evolved.

Problems like how to indicate the politician was a politician occupied my mind for several days but then using placards kind of solved that one.

The two sad ladies looking on from above were inspired by drawings by Mucha. 

Materials

The drawing is on A3 60gsm paper rendered with Lyra pencils of various softness.