The revolutionary anger of asian women (autostraddle)
This was one of six illustrations commissioned by Autostraddle (a queer online magazine) for for their 'How to Survive A Post(?)-COVID World' series. This illustration accompanies a fantastic piece of writing by Diamond Yao - view the article online here.
Inspiration
The concept for this illustration is that anger is represented by an ocean, with the figure of a woman rising up with elemental force, causing waves that crash on the shore. The waves crash around a group of figures who are holding up boards to try and stop the waves - they get battered and splashed by the water and their attempts to contain it are futile. These figures represent conventional barriers that have been imposed on Asian women to silence and contain them. The general feeling of the piece is supposed to be that anger is something natural and inevitable, and that it can be used to overcome limiting barriers. The metaphor of the sea, although ferocious, is also supposed to imply that anger can be fundamentally beautiful and powerful.
Method
The ripple textures, curves and spray of the waves were created using scans of black ink on paper. The rest of the image was rendered digitally using Procreate and Photoshop.
Turnaround Time
Rough: within same day of receiving article text (3 hours)
Final: 8 hours