War and Peace

This drawing seemed like an interesting concept from the beginning. I've always enjoyed steampunk-like artwork, and given the macabre factor that much of my work has, I knew that I would lean toward the "war" side of this project to begin with. The dark subject matter, however, was basically the only thing I was entirely comfortable with. I'd never created any kind of blueprint, manual, mechanical design or even anything similar. 

I did make myself familiar with more of my peers' concepts before getting started than I usually do, and I saw the benefits of that within my own thinking. Being an avid lover of anatomy of any kind, I considered incorporating the body into my work multiple times, and my peers who used a more human approach to the assignment pulled it off beautifully, but I was fearful that I may have come across too cliche or cheesy if I'd attempted the same, so I took that as a sign that it was time to leave my comfort zone behind and pursue something different.

Then came research. I've always loved to watch machines in action via TV shows like "How It's Made", or engineering gifs that I've run across on the internet. Parts working together seamlessly have a serene quality to them for me, and while finding exactly what I wanted to draw took a while, the same serene, satisfying quality manifested itself when piecing my machine together on paper. My uncle is both a pilot and a mechanic for small planes who just moved from Salt Lake City, Utah to Bowling Green for a position at the airport. Being an enthusiastic supporter of my artistic works, he was excited when I asked for his input on this work, but unfortunately our schedules didn't line up in time for me to have much of his influence in the work, so I was on my own, and that was fine.
I created a rough pencil outline on my paper without using any measuring tools to give the work a "mad scientist" feel. I used a dip pen to make those lines more solid, leaving the pencil lines in the background. Finally, I used vine charcoal to darken some of the shadowed areas and write notes and equations about the machine on the work.
I chose the machine's purpose about halfway through creating the drawing. The machine is for war, and it's a machine that would experiment with sound, and at what frequency someone could shut down the whole human brain or specifically the frontal lobe, like an audio lobotomy. I chose this purpose because depending on what frequency and volume it could potentially be adjusted for a small or a large amount of people at once with little to no mess.