Conversations

Time, I'm afraid, for a little more self-advertising. About six years ago, thanks to the Internet, I was able to do a lot of reading on salient parts of our history, while other more recent events I obviously have experienced in my lifetime. Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to put these into a short novel which schoolchildren, in particular, might find enlightening. I called it "Conversations - A South African Discourse", and self-published a few dozen, which didn't exactly race off the shelves. Anyway, while working on a drawing for the front cover, I experimented with the idea of two faces in close contact. The book is about one-on-one conversations between people about their particular plight, so I needed to capture this sense of intense discussion. These are the images I came up with.

This was close to what I finally used, but I needed to make the confrontation between two faces more direct.

Here I went a bit off the topic, but rather enjoy this somewhat phallic figure.

Here, again, too many faces, though a rather interesting image all the same.

There has been a lot of pain in our collective past, and this seems to capture that, but it did not fully fit the bill.

This looks a trifle too much like two ugly old mlungu men kissing.

On the left, I thought of incorporating the faces of people within a map of our country's borders, while on the right I allowed that ever-lurking female nude to escape from my brain onto the paper.

This is starting to get where I was intending to go, with the two faces locked not in a kiss, but in a discussion.

This, then, was the final product. I like to think it essentially portrays a black and a white face locked in conversation. Also, the two eyes can be seen as coming from one face, symbolising our unity in diversity.

This was how I used it on the cover. Not brilliant, but I rather enjoyed putting the thing together.

The back cover. Now I sit back and wait for the national education department to place an order for millions of copies and I make a fortune. Sadly, I think this would be a little too politically incorrect for them, though they'd be surprised at the words I put into the mouths of some of their comrades.

Finally, another nude, which was the last image I came up with in that drawing book, and it had nothing to do with the topic I was working on. Aish!