As Production Manager at the Great Southern Weekender, I was asked to illustrate the front page of the newspaper for the 2016 federal election.
Unlike my previous election illustrations, which were produced after election day, this one was to be printed two days before Australia voted.
The challenge was how to illustrate some sort of narrative in what was widely considered a safe Liberal seat.
One issue which had surfaced during the election campaign was a preference deal struck between supposed political opponents, Labor and Liberal, arguably to the detriment of the Liberals' coalition partner, the Nationals.
My initial thought was to have the Liberal candidate Rick Wilson with his arm around his coalition colleague, Nationals' John Hassell. I would have Rick holding "Labor Preference Deal" paperwork.
The problem with this approach is that it ignored the other "major" players, specifically Labor and Greens.
So, after a bit of a rethink, I decided to illustrate the Labor and Liberal candidates as election mates with Nationals and Greens lower in the picture, just making up the numbers (and that's pretty much how the primary vote went two days later).
2016 Federal Election, O'Connor
Digital caricature ~3800x5000px
© 2016, Andy Dolphin
The candidates shown are: John Ford (Labor), Rick Wilson (Liberal), John Hassell (Nationals) with Giz Watson (Greens) almost photobombing the group.
As with my 2010 election and 2013 election front pages, all work was produced in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet.
