drawings to exercise 1

I am going to create an image about mothers coming back to work after giving birth to a child and how it affects their pay.

I took my inspiration from an article in the magazine called “Britain in 2010“, an annual magazine of the Economic and Social Research council.  The title of this article is “Pay penalty for mums who work” from the page number 82. 

I did a few sketches for this exercise but I am still not sure how I am going to put them all together.  I would like to create an image of a mother standing on the road between two signs. She can stay in the same company with the same pay or go to a different one but with a possibility of loosing some of her monthly wage. 

I found a statuette of fox in my cupboard and I knew that it was a good idea for this project.  A mummy fox with a pram standing in the middle of difficult decision.

I used a pencil and A4 paper for my sketches.

the first illustration try

My background is bland and boring therefore, I would like to introduce some colour.

 second try

 I remembered that I had a small painting of a tree in my files and I decided to use it for my background.  I worked on it in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 for a while and happy with my result I pasted into my illustration.   

this is my final result

This is my final image.  I like the idea of one part colourful and the other grey as it gives a clear picture of division of the decision but there is no good or bad.  Either she will stay in the old and maybe a bit boring job for her but with the same money or she will go into the brighter new job but with less money. I turned around a metaphor that money do not grow on the tree and created an image with money on the tree.