The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

Few things in life excite me, I’m a pretty cool customer. Not exactly the Bond of my nation’s capital, but I’m a man who is not easily flapped, ergo, I like to think of myself as unflappable. I no longer squirt when I hear the ice-cream man’s piper song play down the street (not that anyone hears those fat tunes much anymore, must have been phased out what with all the crimes and stuff) and the offer of being the 1 millionth customer on a website to possibly go into their ‘prospective winners draw’ just doesn’t get me double-clicking my mouse (no metaphor, literally…I’m a dude, c’mon). But some things still get me.

Finding a wicked book at a secondhand bookstore, and it has a very nice price. I’m bouncing off the walls. Hell, just finding a secondhand book store anymore is cause for rejoice and a few minutes of swivel-hipped dancing. Watching a new episode of LOST, I can barely hold my tea straight or dunk my biscuit steadily. Writing a sentence, paragraph or passage and just knowing I’ve nailed it, hot damn I’ll dance a victory celebration to rival the Ickywood Shuffle.

But, there is always one type of thing that gets the heart racing and the fingers twirling. Anything free! I am a sucker for free stuff, even if I don’t need it.

Free mascara? I’ll take it, for the lady, you know… Free.
Free Comic Book Day? I agree, better than Xmas!
Free colon cleansing? Tell you what sir, I’ll even take my pants down for you for free, not a common occurrence. Ah, who am I kidding, that’s pretty much how I got myself through uni. Pulling my pants down, not colon cleansing; though if I had gotten paid to give/get colon cleansers for money, I would have been the richest man at EPC.

So, I caught wind of a fantastic little promotion from Joe Pickering, an Editor for Penguin UK, that said I could win a free copy of Shepard Fairley’s very awesome cover to George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, click the link to see the pic, it’s the cover on the left, for those of you not so astute. It’s free to enter and the prize is, as usual but not always so please remember to check, free! I just have to show and answer; What Image Best Sums George Orwell? Well, that’s not right, because it then asks me to ‘find an image…that best sums up the book.’ It has to be something they can use, something licensed for creative commons use. I figure one of my own drawings should be good enough, so I whipped something up. Here it is…

I drew an image of a journal, and quite a nice one too, if I do say so. Then I put in some writing using the computer. The lines are a quote from the journal that the main protagonist, Winston Smith, writes in the book. I have made each progressive word fade further and further away to show how history could easily be erased or changed and that is what is happening in the image. Winston’s journal is changing right before our eyes, the history of his words is being warped. I think it is a fairly good example of a single image representing a few themes of the book.

Realistically, the font or exact words could be changed, it might be a little bolder to not have the heading ‘Journal of Winston Smith’ and just lead with the quote. I’ll let them decide, otherwise I think they get the gist of it.

Now fingers crossed that I win…

PS I love Joe Pickering…haha!

Posted on July 8th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: art, books