The Natural World

The task at hand is to incorporate something of the natural world into your digital painting.

The original task was to create a poster for the Toronto Police with the tag line “One Career, May Opportunities” incorporated into my design. Diversity was an essential component of the design as well as police constables, communication operators; basically, a uniform reference. Otherwise, there were no other specifications for the art direction. 

My process is to start with brainstorming.  The information junkie in me likes to soak up as much as I can about my subject topic.  What I found most fascinating during that process was the history of women in law enforcement. Canada’s first female police officer is considered to be Rose Fortune, who was aa Black Loyalist, born into slavery. Before joining law enforcement she  was a successful entrepreneur and imposed curfews in Annapolis, Nova Scotia in the early 1800s.  I was blown away by this.

Here are the greatest hits from my brainstorming:

-The first women to be hired as police officers in Canada were Lunacy Harris, Minnie Miller, and Annie Jackson in 1912. Harris and Miller would patrol dance halls, beer parlors, and parks, while Jackson’s duties involved women who worked in prostitution.

-Vera Bell and Mrs. Mowat became Calgary’s first policewomen in 1943 on a temporary basis.

In 1946, Vera Russell, Margaret Sadler, and Olive Stanton became the first full-time female officers in Calgary.

-In 1974 in Toronto, female officers are assigned to do patrols with male officers.

-The title “policewoman” is no longer used for female police officers. 

-On September 16, 1974, thirty-two women are sworn in with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as their first female officers. All thirty-two were sworn in simultaneously across Canada as a gesture to ensure the pressure of being the first female RCMP officer was not transferred to one woman but for the group to uphold as a whole.

-In 1994, Lenna Bradburn becomes the police chief of the service in Guelph, Ontario, becoming Canada’s first female chief of police.

-In 2016, female officers make up 21% of all police officers in Canada.

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This aided in my decision to focus my piece on a vintage photo of officers that I found on the Toronto Police Instagram page and began painting (which you can see if older blog posts).

In thinking about what I wanted to incorporate form the natural world I went with the idea of adding old newspaper reports regarding these fascinating statistics.  I couldn’t find any version of old clippings reporting women in law enforcement, so I used a bit of an art hack and created the newspapers myself with the help of online generators.  When I saw this demonstrated in class, the use of natural objects there were some very cool ideas I am sure I will liberate.  I am especially fond of one piece that incorporated a scanned wildflower into the background.

In the end, I generated a loosely painted emblem right off a constable’s uniform to create some contrast and draw focus to the center of the poster.  I redid the illustration and took the banner out because I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. I struggle with creative typography.  I sued an old vintage font but as I type this I wonder if a more modern and bolder font would have been a better use.

I left it for a day and when I came back to it I decided to frame my original piece with a kind of filmstrip border to finesse it up a bit because there were a lot of bisque and sepia tones. I worked mt Photoshop layers and all those shenanigans and here is the result.