To avoid criticism...

So I just graduated from SCAD (woo!) I will be going to NYC next week and meeting some art directors and illustrators (can't wait!) But before I go, here's a new illustration:

In Jean Paul Sartre's play "No Exit," he muses that hell is other people. Seems very simple, yes? So simple that making characters unable to blink is enough to cause hell for the other characters.

One theory that I once heard from a professor, says that being observed by others freezes one's consciousness. If you are being observed, you just stop what you're doing, and therefore, it becomes harder to be yourself since you are frozen by the others' gazes. Now imagine being in a room where nobody can blink...

So that, in a nutshell, is what this illustration is about. It is a re-do from my Editorial class from a couple years back.

The idea came from a fortune cookie that I interpreted into an illustration. It said: "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."

Basically, the only way to not receive any criticism at all is to be nobody at all. Even the nicest people  receive criticism even if it's triggered by petty jealousy instead of an actual flaw in the person.

The original statement seems so concise and straight to the point yet everyone who reads it can interpret something different from it.