Lame Duck
I realized I haven’t been posting anything from my Illustration 1 class yesterday. So I scanned in my final ink wash illustrations that I am turning in tomorrow. The project was a new project that the Illustration staff created where we take different sayings and illustrate the literal and figurative meanings of them. Words like:
Nuttier than a fruitcake
Humble Pie
Lame Duck
In a pickle
Happier than a clam (at high tide)
and so on.
The list was close to 20 of these things and we could choose to do the same thing both literally and figuratively or do one literal and one figurative. I chose “Lame Duck” after originally thinking about doing “Bring home the bacon.” I did a lot of word association lists, definition searching, and researching history of the phrase for the first part. I realized that though I needed to know the proper definition I also wanted to learn a little more about the context of the phrase and even how one would look at this phrase literally.
When I jumped into the literal meaning, my first concepts were basic, though interesting, they ultimately needed something more a story behind them. I started by doodling out a duck with a broken leg in a wheel chair. Then put him into a scene where he was looking out the window at a brighter nicer day. Turns out I completely overlooked the Rear Window reference that my professor brought up to me so a did a few revisions of that.
In the end though I decided on a more simple approach putting the duck in a wheelchair looking into a mirror. It isn’t that the “Rear Window Duck” was a bad concept, I just wanted a little more visual variety between my figurative and literal versions of Lame Duck.
In the fancy mirror with an allegory of a lion (for power) is a reflection of his former self. To emphasize the gloomy and depressing feeling (reenforcing the lame in lame duck) I used the wash very loosely and splattery and gave him an word/speech bubble filled only with an ellipsis. I kept the scenery purposely empty to keep the hollow feeling of loneliness that the obviously old and frail duck experiences. But rather than make this a realistic and overly dark image, I chose to make the duck cute…ish.
Final:
As for the literal meaning of this phrase, I was little drawn on the concept. Do I do what I want and risk insulting or offending people in my class? How poltical does this really need to be? I had a million questions running through my mind. when it came down to it, I had a few ideas. I based them around this definition of the phrase Lame Duck:
“Lame Duck President is someone who in our recent history is of no influence of power to Congress, or conducting foreign policy.”
I originally played with the concept of using different presidents instead of the obvious choice. But when it came down to it, it wasn’t that I was going to offend someone with my approach to using President Bush as the lame duck, it was that I wasn’t sure how to accomplish showing him as a Lame Duck President without resorting to the offensive, direct, more often seen imagery against the unpopular president. After doing some sketches I realized there was a way of showing a President who is more or less has his hands tied as the last length of his stay in office is over shadowed by who his successor is going to be.
The first concept was to make him a duck, but still show Bush-like features. I placed him in a boxing ring, showing he had been defeated by an unnamed contender in the eye of the public and world leaders. Then I decided that wasn’t the most effective way of showing him as a Lame Duck. He wasn’t a loser, he is more or less ignored. President Bush’s power, though still powerful, is currently being over looked and his last couple of months in power aren’t very remarkable. He’s crossed the line at where his successes are of interest to the public and world at large. So I thought of who else I think of as a person in power who really doesn’t do that great of a job and that people generally don’t respect dispite their ability to lead and get things done…. Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin Paper Company’s bumbling, sometimes childlike Regional Manager of the Scranton branch in NBC’s The Office.
Final:
To create the Michael Scott look, I had to give him things that could have more than one meaning and also still read as what they were.
A highlight of Michael Scott’s desk. It’s humor in the show comes from the fact he bought it for himself, in this case its double play is on how many people view President Bush as a world leader who points his finger at a map and starts a war because they are “evil”.
Another Michael Scott thing where he creates trophies to give to his employee’s every year, but not actually for the typical reasons, but rather things he makes up himself that he feels deserve to be honored (ie: Kevin from accounting’s Dundie from the “Don’t Got In There After Me Award” referring to one time Michael went into the bathroom after Kevin). The double meaning here, being President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.
Telephone with webs on it:
Meant as a commentary on the “Red Phone” for emergencies from Moscow to Washington D.C. during the Cold War and most recently referred to by Hillary Clinton during her run for president. The cobwebs obviously portraying its lack of use and he isn’t a dominate figure in foreign policy anymore.
The car and teeth:
The teeth are just a fun reference to the toys on Michael Scott’s desk. The car is in addition to those toys, but also doubles as reference to his failure to deliver a solution to the world’s oil problems as he promised in 2000.
So, though I didn’t have to get highly political and found a way to make references to the issues at hand, I feel I was still able to make an image the tells the same story whether you are a fan of President Bush or not. I just included other things that had second meanings to emphasize the actual definition of Lame Duck. Whether these things are lost or not, I won’t know until I get the grade back. We’ll see.
UPDATE: A-/B+ as a overall grade on both. Not bad!
