Taking inspiration from my studio mate Scott Garrett I've decided to try and write a little bit more here about commissions and the process I go through when tackling them. I say tackling as every single commission always feels like a tussle where I have to scrap with it and wrestle with it until I find a visual way into solving the problem. With this in mind a brief from The Economist for a range of illustrations on the subject pornography is always going to be just that little bit tougher. A delicate subject and a day and a half to complete the job required a late night down the studio resulting in a range of loose, collaged, roughs about issues such as the data, access and effects of pornography. These roughs were pretty well received although my favourite one at the top which reflected part of the article discussing how viewers of pornography held a different view about the ideal female body, didn't make the cut.

These roughs were then pushed and developed further resulting in the images below. An interesting recent development is that magazines that have a large social media following like The Economist are increasingly using illustration to tempt readers to access an article via a click from their social media feed. This means that I am having to ensure that images work for both large scale print and also small scale social media feeds.

This image then appeared on 10.7 Million news feeds which is a little bit mind blowing!