Dean's note: This political cartoon is up for critique, to view more of David's work check out Hypnocrites or Left 'Toon Lane in the sidebar.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
David Honig
Posted by Dean at 8:16 AM
Labels: cartoon, David Honig, digital
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4 comments:
You can click on the image to see a larger version of it. I'll comment later.
My initial reaction to this one was a little bit of confusion. I had to think about it, even though the meaning now seems pretty obvious. I think that's something to consider though. I've heard in advertising classes they say that an ad only works if it's understood within 10 seconds. Well, I don't like watching ads so I wouldn't use them as a gold standard. But, there's something there to possibly consider, whether it matters or not if the meaning is almost instantaneously there. I hesitated writing this because I now feel this image is pretty self-explanatory.
Visually, critiquing a cartoon is something to which I'm not accustomed. There's kind of a whole different set of "rules" and expectations. Sometimes "cartoony" can be a sly, snarky criticism leveled a piece of art. It usually has the underlying meaning that certain aspects of the painting rely on using the same system to paint a certain thing in the same way. So maybe an painter would paint an eye the same in each painting.
Anyway, with cartoons there often is visual consistency from one work to another. For example, in animated series there is often a consistent world with its own idiosyncratic rules (the Simpsons never age!). But, I'm not sure how much that applies to the Hynocrites cartoons because they seem to inspired by ideas. In other words they come across as if David had an idea and then executed it how he thought it would work visually.
I think that can be seen as a strength, rather than a process of having a cartoon world and trying to weave sociopolitical satire into it.
Visually, I think this piece comes across as stronger than some of the early ones I've seen. There's a unity in this one with each frame having figures placed waist up (or almost) with the same text format and a solid background color. One thing that I think is important to consider is the relationship with the figure and the rest of the page (and the ground if that's included).
In some other pieces the figures have been placed against a white background and there's a kind of indefinite space. Here that may theoretically apply, but I feel it works better. Probably because the colors used in the background are also used in the figures.
In terms of a few small quibbles, I'm weary of straight up white. With eyes, we may think of there being a white space around the iris, but what we actually see there might be totally different or variations of that depending on the amount and color of light in a given setting. I guess with cartoons it's tricky because it is sometimes about communicating the idea of an eye rather than a combination of colors and marks that we would then call an eye.
Finally, this makes me all think of the importance of drawing from observation. Something all of us visual artists have to keep up. I had a professor who told us we should be drawing for three hours a day or we were wasting our time. I thought that was crazy at the time, who has time to draw for three hours a day? But his point was well taken. I should go pick up my sketchbook!
the only thing that seems a bit off here is the "bigamy," when the picture is of polygamy. but the basic point comes through fairly well.
FUCK
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