Bury Me Face Down

The easiest thing to do would be to slap a block of text onto fabric and leave it at that. I could never get away with so little; having established a store at CafePress called Illustrated Aphorisms, I'm professionally obligated to include an image of some sort. Which brings me to the most vexing problem I face as a designer: I can barely draw. Ten or fifteen years ago this would have posed a nearly insurmountable obstacle, but now with digital technology people like me can leverage a sample cup's worth of talent into a barrel's worth of output.



We started, simply enough, with a photo. This man graciously volunteered to simulate a corpse by lying face down with his rump high in the air.








Next we subtracted all the clutter in the room, and all color from the prone figure. If only the first part could be done as easily in real life.






Next we traced prominent features of our model, and subtracted the original photo. Note the varying thickness of lines used. This is an actual technique employed by real illustrators to emphasis some parts of a figure and de-emphasize others.

With the figure done, it was time to represent the surrounding environment. First we added a ground line...








Then some loose dirt piled up around the sides of the protruding anatomical feature and blades of grass everywhere else...









Then a texture that resembles compacted layers of dirt...











And finally a kiss where it was always intended to go....

Inserting the phrase or slogan above and below my figure completed the basic, t-shirt ready image.

Initially I had some reservations about adding camouflage. It would have been presumptuous to assume all active duty soldiers resent the wars they are fighting. I also thought the "bury me face down" sentiment might apply in general to any situation where someone has been forced/obligated to do a thankless job under questionable pretenses, and with no apparent end to it in sight.

But on further reflection it seemed to me that if US soldiers have been writing stuff like this on their gear in the 40 years (give or take) since a veteran somewhere in the southeast Asian jungle did it, a variation with a military theme was certainly justified. These days there must be a sizeable crop who want to scream "KISS MY ASS!" after serving two tours in Iraq. Or three. Or four. (Anyone been there five times? I shouldn't wonder if there have, 'cause it sure doesn't look like that war is winding down yet.)

Besides which, it gave me a chance to add color back into the mix.

So I dug up samples of camouflage and studied them. What luck. Many of the patterns resemble nothing more than shapeless blobs with an occasional jagged edge. I knew I could draw something like that with my eyes closed. In fact, eyes closed was probably the best way to do it.





Shirt and socks rapidly got the treatment, as you can see. The kiss mark acquired a coat of red paint.

Here was the final result:

Get yours today!

A lens describing the sequence of accidents, blunders, crises, disasters, failures, goof-ups, hassles, imbroglios, jumbles, kerfuffles, mistakes, pratfalls, reversals, and snafus that led to the establishment of Illustrated Aphorisms, my store at CafePress.