World Gone Mad

World Gone Mad, 207, 22x30in, tech pen on paper
I don't know if I can top myself here. I worked on this piece for the entire month of August 2007. I thought I could do it in 2 weeks, fill up a page 22x30in. The thing that really took a long time to do was the ground texture. I used a felt tip brush pen to do the entire piece. I actually used several of them because I don't like to use dull, worn out tips. I like the sharp, millimeter tip. With a brush pen, the amount of pressure effects the width of the line. With all this fine detail, I had to be extremely meticulous with how I worked the tip. Pretty nerve racking experience. Not like being in an airplane going down, or anything, something I could live to tell about, but I was stressed out a whole bunch. I'm stressed with every art work I do, but this one, just in its scope takes the cake as being one of my most difficult drawings. The only thing that compares is animation, but I love animation :)

So the idea of this piece was to portray society as it really is. To show the history of violence all at once. Even if these things aren't happening right now, like a riot, as this piece looks, I tried to envision a section of land, with the type of violent history it has had. In the background is the Bexar county jail.
This is about cause and effect. The more limits you place on things like drugs, the more violence and crime there is going to be. If nobody gave a fuck about drugs, than there wouldn't be any problems right?
Why then are there so many laws, and more by the day, to prohibit you from drugs? Its a prison system. Its a world gone mad is what it is.

So let me explain some of the imagery for the piece. My intention was to replicate Hackberry st on the city's east side, so some of the terrain and buildings are my general description of the area. You may recognize something, but nothing is drawn to scale or accuracy. I'm familiar with the area. Its a street you don't want to walk on at night. Hookers work it 24/7.

I've never walked the street here. My dad works on Cherry st which runs parallel to Hackberry, so I've seen this area a lot over my life. The entire east side is dangerous. Don't tell me its not 'cause I seen people at 3 in the morning just standing, plain sight, slanging drugs. Probably crack. The hood is delapidated, and I seen a recently burned out house there, and that is where I got the house on fire idea in the drawing.

I once see this woman, fresh out the hospital still wearing her hospital gown, so I drew her a few times. She was just chillin' on the curb with a drunkard, sipping on a 40.

The helicopters crashing was something I seen on the news around that time. I can imagine it happening again, it would probably work to the advantage of the criminals since the ghetto bird choppers are down, they don't got to worry about them eyes in the sky.

The police cruiser and officer slamming into the suspect is something that had really happened at the time this piece was done. A person was thought to be a suspect of a robbery and the cop felt threatened by the teenager and slammed him with the cruiser into a telephone poll to neutralize the suspect. Pretty messed up, having your spine and internal organs violently squashed with a few hundred horse power metal object and a splintery telephone poll.

Other stuff is typical body stashed in some grass, hooker and her john fucking outdoors, how romantic. hit and runs. Random gang violence, and some kids playing with guns.

I intentionally didn't use perspective. I tried to format this as a Chinese scroll, one of my favorite art forms I may add. I used to draw scrolls a few years back. Like 4 or 5 years back. I liked Chinese scroll art way more than all of western art, that is until I discovered Albrecth Durer.

Oh yeah and this piece goes good with a couple of Necro songs:
World Gone Mad
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8sgX8IKIaqA
Poetry in the Streets
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dPkAFiJE1j8