Los Campesinos!

Client: Heat Rash &#8211; Los Campesinos! Submission
Date: 2011
Category: Illustration

Project Description

Los Campesinos sent out a request for drawing submissions for one of the following:

a black bird (note: not necessarily a blackbird, but a bird that is black)
a dead animal (nothing too exotic)
a close up of an area of the human body
ugly natural geography

When I was in Mongolia I did a series of sketches of a horse that was unwell. We’d set up camp and I could see something white in the distance so walked up to it on my own. It was a very sad sight, probably a bit strange of me to draw it but I’d been travelling for five months at this point and I was pretty used to just sketching everything I came across! Plus, when you’re in the middle of nowhere in the Mongolian steppe, well, there’s not a lot there! Which is interesting in itself, miles upon miles of no visible traces of human existence.

Anyway, I sat not too close so as to not panic it and just drew. I could see a figure approaching in the distance, he arrived as I finished sketching. He’d brought the dying horse a bucket of water. We looked at each other but didn’t attempt communication. He carried on caring for the horse and I slunk away feeling a bit awkward.

So I reinterpreted this experience into a submission for Heat Rash.