A Call to end horse slaughter
Although horse slaughter plants within the United States have closed, horses are still being sent to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. Here, they can be shipped within crowded trucks for more than twenty-four hours without food, water or rest. They are often seriously injured or killed within transit. Once they arrive at their destination, the process for executing the animals is grossly inhumane. Horses are skittish in nature which makes accurate pre-slaughter stunning difficult. As a result, horses commonly endure repeated blows and are sometimes conscious during dismemberment. It rarely is a quick, painless death. Therefore, it needs to stop.
I hope to bring awareness to this issue through this piece. When more people understand the brutality of the act, there will be a greater amount of people to help prevent it in the future.
Ideation Sketches
To begin, I searched the internet to find images that would help narrate the process of horse slaughter. Therefore, I looked for pictures that depicted the auction, transportation, and confinement of horses going to the slaughterhouse. After collecting images, I used iteration to create five different compositions that all reflect the deplorable events of horse slaughter. From the five, I chose the top two compositions to continue on to stage two because they create a greater emotional pull than the others. They also are more appealing because of their ability to produce deep space. In the first, the road leads one's eye to the back of the composition, while the mountain creates space in the second.
Testing Different Mediums
For the next stage, I experimented with two different materials. For the first, I used Prismacolor markers to create the scene. For the second, I used an ink pen.
Atmospheric perspective, diagonals, and overlap were used to create the illusion
of three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface.
Here, I focused on creating a great contrast between the road and the surroundings of the horseshoe.
I used this contrast to bring the viewer's eye to the horses in distress in the center.
In this piece, I focused on figure ground. I overlapped the horses with the mountain in the background. One can also tell that the auctioneers are closest to the viewer. I did this so one could place himself or herself in their shoes as if they are at the scene. This adds to the emotional intensity.
When drawing this piece, I decided to loosen up. I wanted my lines to express the emotional distress the horses were feeling. Therefore, instead of keeping tight cross hatching marks throughout the piece, I experimented with circular marks on the edges.
Final Illustration
I used ink cross hatching for the final because of its ability to create a sense of chaos. This disarray parallels the unorganized, inhumane process of horse slaughter and further narrates the tragic story.