Bankrupt Nation (Interior)

From the art director's lips (or rather, the email): "This story is simply about the great debt our nation is in. I think we want to depict the “gruesome” aspect of this topic, and really drive home the point that our debt is ruinous. Your style struck a chord with me because you’ve done several pieces that are sort of dramatic in manner, but can deliver the message in a palpable way. I’ve attached a cover template so you can also get an idea of where things fall in placement. I’d like to get 3-5 different sketches, and then we’ll choose one for cover, one for inside."

In order to milk this assignment for two blog posts, I will post some of the sketches and the interior illustration today; then I will post the rest of the sketches and the cover art next month :)

I had a pretty confident idea that a certain sketch (not shown) would be chosen for the cover, so I explored a wide variety of subject matter for the other concepts. The first 3 of the 6 sketches:

Lady Liberty drowning in red ink (quote from article) explored in two sketches:


And a bank picked clean:

In the end, the art director went with the torch as the interior image:




Enjoy the Day,
Chris