I am still working on my Mean People Suck set of illustrations. This one is titled, “Mean People love it when you are their Good Dog”.
After observing behavior in others and recalling a few bad memories I came up with the phrase. I thought about the concept of what that means. What is a “good dog?” It is a gentle needy type who is compliant and doesn’t want to lose the mean person’s “friendship”. They don’t know how to set boundaries and really don’t have the ability to tell the mean person to fu@@ off.
For each of these illustrations I am working out a description to go on the back of the card, if they turn out to be cards.
I started out with the usual evil person interacting with his or her victim. I thought about the victim as a puppet with the abuser pulling the strings. That made me think about Punch and Judy type puppets. They evolved into the characters you see here with cat and dog archetypes.
I am still working out the style and the overall look of the whole set. This one is colored pencil done in very simple coloring book style.
I am also contemplating whether I want to offer these illustrations one at a time direct to the public or put together a bunch of them and present them to a publisher. I am leaning toward the first option. Publishers have too much power.
