This was the most difficult illustration project so far, but it was a great challenge! The hardest part about this project was the short timeline. I feel like editorial illustration would be my least favorite out of all of the types of illustration because you usually have such a short turn around time. I like to have more time to develop and refine my ideas. It’s helpful to have multiple stages to get feedback from a client and time in between to rework the illustration based on the feedback. This is why I loved surface design and creating an illustration for the farmers market. I enjoy working in lots of detail, so it’s hard for me to create something quickly! It’s also challenging creating something with so much meaning behind it, because the audience could get a different meaning from it than you anticipated. Overall, I am happy with how my illustrations turned out!
One part of the article that really stood out to me was how a lot of times one person in a family will feel like they carry the weight of the entire household; this burden often falls on mothers. This doesn’t mean that they have to do every task in the household, but it does mean that they need to keep track of everything in their head at all times. This could include grocery list, important events, what’s on the menu for dinner, etc. This can get very overwhelming for one person to keep track of, so I wanted to illustrate this concept.
I decided to have a women laying down in the grass with a house sitting on top of her. At first, I had the house just awkwardly laying there and it felt disconnected. To fix this, I created roots reaching down from the house connecting to the women. This symbolizes the idea that without her, the house would not be able to function. The burden of holding up the household is constantly draining her of energy. I added shadows throughout the piece to add more depth. The background seems like a rural community because I wanted to show how isolating it feels to be the one in charge of the household. No one understands or appreciates the burden of this role unless they are in the same position.
My secondary illustration speaks to a similar concept. I took a reference photo of myself carrying a ton of stuff; things that I find myself carrying a lot. I wanted to illustrate the idea that millennials struggle with balancing so many things at once and all of the little tasks just keep piling up. I left the face very simple to show how empty it feels to have so much on your to-do list. I included the sunglasses to show that the figure is tired and is trying to block out the rest of the world.
I really enjoyed creating the mockups for this project! It was really rewarding to see how the illustration would look to the audience as they are about to click on the article. I also think my illustration cropped really well to the different sized layouts, which is good to know. Sometimes when you crop something you end up losing too much, but I think it still worked well in this case.
