Getting the Gist: Hard Edge of Empire II

Completing my visual exploration of Charles Stross' essay The Hard Edge of Empire. I really focused in a particular paragraph that presents the concrete realities that would accompany a mundane steampunk society. I wanted to create an illustration that a reader would instantly recognise as springing forth directly from the life and world Stross imagines for us, concentrated down into a single narrative moment that still relates to the overall tone of the essay. The real readers and writers of fantastic fiction are presented here with the hidden underbelly of the heroic worlds they read about: a mere imagined downward pan of the eyeline reveals that science adventurers and gunslingers are supported by an iniquitous system that has been willfully ignored. While the privileged heroes are left distant and anonymous, the oppressed look us right in the eye.

"empty-headed graces of debutantes raised from birth to be bargaining chips" close observation of period costume and machinery were important in shaping both the specific visual design and tone of the final illustration.	"the empty-stomached anguish of a young prostitute on the streets of a northern town"/ "fading eyesight and mangled fingers of nine year olds forces to labour on steam-powered looms" the crippled mother and children were the most important group, the most challenging and ultimately the least successful.
"forget wealthy aristocrats sipping tea in sophisticated London parlours"	"casual boiled-beef brutality of the soldiers who take the King's shilling to break the heads of union members" many choices I made, from cropping the faces of the upper figures to strongly splitting the composition and colour scheme are intended to 'pull focus' away from the commonly aristocratic concerns of steampunk to the cruelty of their society & the less fortunate masses

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in progress

final