Thursday, July 22, 2010

Steve Breen: Drawing with BP Oil


Editorial cartoonist Steve Breen decided that using regular old ink to depict the anger he felt about BP oil spill wasn't effective enough.

Now, most people who are not happy with the way things are will sit back in their chair and complain. Not Steve. He went in to action. He spent his own time and money to address his dissatisfaction.

Here's a bit from the AP article:

"'I wanted to channel that outrage in a unique way,' he wrote in an e-mail to the AP, 'and since I'm in the powerful image business, I came up with the oil idea.'

"Breen flew across the continent on his own dime to spend the Fourth of July weekend collecting tar balls on Florida's Santa Rosa Island. He took the globs home to California, thinned them with gasoline and created four cartoons.

"One panel shows a BP logo made up of oiled birds and sea creatures, another the Statue of Liberty holding a dripping oil drum aloft instead of a torch. The brownish-orange oil - darker or lighter, depending on the amount of gasoline Breen used - seems almost to bleed from the page."

3 comments:

Book Mama said...

That is fantastic. We are huge fans of Steve Breen's children's books--Violet the Pilot especially--so it is really interesting to see the "other" lives of illustrators. I appreciate his drawing very much, though I don't think my 3 year old will for a few more years!

Jasmine said...

thats pretty amazing, kind of unnessisary but amazing none the less

Mark Anderson said...

That's one of those things where you pound your forehead for not thinking of.

OW!