Ditching my Old Sketchbook (OUAN401)

A few weeks back I decided to completely restart the sketchbook I'm developing themed around Marx and Engels' belief that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. I realised that this was a tad RISKY. What prompted such a crazy and far out decision? Well, I dropped my first sketchbook down a storm drain and couldn't get it out so I had to get another.

Nah, that's not true.

I felt that I hadn't realised the full potential of the sketchbook and that, had I submitted my first sketchbook, I would have wasted an opportunity to really explore the concept with various design choices and abstract stuff and things like that. I felt that my last sketchbook was too cartoony without really delving into the meat and two veg of the quote. And cartoons are for kids, man! If I were a real artist I would draw a picture of Karl Marx on acid using my own blood or something like that.

ONLY JOKING BECAUSE cartoons are fine I suppose, but my biggest problem before was that I was very aware that the issue of the social elite dictating the thoughts of society has been commented on by, I dunno, about FIFTY BILLION ARTISTS in the past. I didn't want to make the same points that had been repeated so many times before, so I took the route of commenting on the issue in a snarky, ironic manner so as to distance myself from the other people.

At first I found it hard to make a statement about the ruling class without resorting to these kind of clichéd tropes

And these really blatant, patronising metaphors

But after a while all the snarky ironicness made me annoy even myself. I'm going to transfer some ideas from the previous sketchbook to the new sketchbook, but I want to start thinking more about what I'm really trying to say. I'll use the power of SEMIOTICS.

What am I signifying? What colours do I use to signify it? What objects? Quotes? The possibilities are limitless. I'm far more optimistic about the new sketchbook.