My Latest Newspaper Illustration (Failure)

...The story angle: During these times of financial strife for the common man there is a crop of new shows depicting the fortunes and misfortunes of impossibly wealthy people-- programs reminiscent of "Dynasty" and "Dallas."
...Interesting, eh? Well, how do you illustrate that? I still don't know.
...I could have made a collage using the handout art from various shows, but that's tedious and the pictures were blah. So, by combining several small not-so-great ideas, I crafted one, gigantic bad illustration.

...Usually, when I'm stumped, I just start working; adding, subtracting as I go. Most of the time I can find a concept that is at least competently illustrative before I get to the deadline.
...But not all of the time.
...I prefer to be able to look at an illustration and get some idea of what the story is about-- this one does not succeed. If you don't know the gist of the story there's NO WAY you can guess the topic. Even after you read the story and then look at the picture, you might say: "Yeah, well. Um, I guess I  see the connection there. Yeah. Hm. Cute doggies!"
...I put in a bunch of cute widdle doggies because sometimes if you mix in a large enough chunk of  saccharin, you can distract the eye from the quality of the rest of the art. I should have just filled the page with Yorkies.

The End

x

p.s. The funny part is, and I forgot to mention it, I had a great time doing this. I worked on it in short bursts over a couple of days between my job's other tedious labors, and I was completely happy with each little bit I drew as I went along. In the end I don't think I pulled off what I was trying to pull off, because I didn't know what I was trying to pull off, if you get me.
...You know that saying about the journey being the exciting part, and how when you get to where you were trying to get it turns out to be a dump? Well, I had a great journey!
n