Fracking, Fires & Burning Tyres: Project 2104

A day in the life of a drawing.. or two

Today is my day to contribute  to Project Two Thousand and Fourteen. It’s a great visual online project set up by Nicola Fitzsimmons. Each day a different artist makes a piece of work in response to a news item. It’s a tight schedule which I always rather like. The work to date is great, very varied and fascinating.

See all the images at http://twothousandandfourteen.com/ I started early listening to the news with my sketchbook by my side. There have been so many dreary things on this week but I was struck by all the mentions of fires from all over the world. A pile of tyres in the UK whose smoke could be seen from space, wild fires in Australia and California. Then there was the fracking debate, a further report about gastric band surgery to cure our ever growing obesity problems… Hmmm. I wondered about the Earth, trying to rid itself of the burdens of pollution and an increasingly heavy population.

By about 11am I had got this far.. Earth blowing smoke rings, thinking about the burning tyres and the weight. Michelin man can stand for both 🙂 By 2 pm  I had two images. One more or less monochrome and one colour

I like both but must decide by 5.30… Then at 2.30 I started thinking about the NSA and the collection of data etc. so sketched these American Eagle claws loosening their grip on the net. But on reflection we don’t think that Obama’s reforms will really address the main concerns that such overarching and deep surveillance brings, particularly to non US citizens…so there would have to be question mark against this image. I had hoped to make a print of this but just ran out of time. However I do have other plans for this image.

It was a really interesting project to do and I may do some more, just for my own pleasure. It’s good brain work, forcing you to consider images that you perhaps would not normally tackle, and the deadline is great. And I went for the monochrome one eventually… 🙂