Santa (is Nigh)
I’m throwing this one up on the blog because I don’t really consider this one done yet.
I wanted to show some process on a piece that I worked on recently related to the Holiday. I thought about various holidays and “important” things or potential hot topics for the rest of the year and how to combine them. I was thinking about what might be happening in December when I remembered that the world is supposed to end on the 21st, just a few days before Christmas. Despite the fact that nobody really believes in these “end of the world” things, I figured it would get brought up again when the date is closer. So I wanted Santa to take part in the fun of moving past this ridiculous event. In the original idea, Santa was going to be standing over a man passed out on the sidewalk with a sign that read “The End is Nigh.” However, Santa will have painted over “The End” with “Christmas” instead as he giggles to himself and tells the viewer to keep it a secret. As this idea continued to develop, I removed Santa and replaced him with a shadow.(img1) It was at this point that the image started to take on a different kind of feeling than I wasnted, so I scraped those ideas to draw up a new Santa. (img2) So after this new sketch I thought this version looked like he could be tagging the wall behind him. I removed the man with the sign and pushed forward with that.(img3 &4)
I consider this image incomplete because I’ve been playing with a number of different tags that Santa could be spray painting. I have been diving into a number of conversations ranging from topics on security issues to Occupy and so on. This current version is meant to get a little less heavy and make it more playful by having him paint a snowflake, but it just so happens to start looking like the Star of David. So like I said, I’m still playing…
