Persons of Note - Gandhi

Produce a series of illustrations in response to a given person of note. This series must exist across of range of differing formats whilst maintaining a visual consistency throughout.

The range of formats are:

4 X Stamps. 50mm x 30mm. Format orientation optional

4 X Postcards. 105mm x 210mm. Format orientation optional

1 X Poster. 594 mm x 420mm. Format orientation optional

Mahatma Gandhi

Of the three names given to me to work from I have chosen Gandhi, I before making any initial research about him I hardly knew anything about him. Gandhi was at first a lawyer before he became involved with efforts to end discrimination against the Indian minority in South Africa by the British and the Boers.

• Founder of Natal Indian Congress which worked to further Indian interests
• Today India has its political independence largely due to the work of Gandhi 
• He practiced sexual abstinence, renounced modern technology and developed 'satyagrahawas', a method of non-violent resistance - willingness to endure punishment and jail
• Stood for peace and non violence - "In its positive form, nonviolence means the largest love, the greatest charity. If I am a follower of nonviolence, I must love my enemy."
• He was a vegetarian
• He led a 200 mile Salt March so that the people of India could make and gather their own salt. His goal for the people of India not to buy salt from the British
• He led a life long fight for the Independence of India which became reality on August 15 1947
• A figure of integrity, consistency and humanity

Known as "The Great Soul"

"Gandhi was a pioneer in these new realms of consciousness. Everything he did was an experiment in expanding the human being's capacity to love, and as his capacity grew, the demands on his love grew more and more severe, as if to test what limits a human being can bear. But Gandhi had learned to find a fierce joy in these storms and trials. . . . By the end of his life he was aflame with love." 
— Eknath Easwaran in Gandhi The Man

He practiced compassion in creative ways

The story below is really inspirational - a good basis for an illustration of compassion?

"One day Gandhi stepped aboard a train as it started to move, and one of his shoes slipped off and dropped on the tracks. Unable to retrieve it, he calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. When an amazed passenger asked why he had done that, Gandhi smiled and said, 'The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will now have a pair he can use.' With the eyes of his imagination, Gandhi saw a man with bare feet, saw him coming across a lone shoe and desperately searching for the other, and saw the disappointment on his face when he didn't find it; seeing these things, Gandhi did what he could to help."
— Donald McCullough in Say Please, Say Thank you

"I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort, and cultivate the same hope and faith."

 'Full effort is full victory,'

"Late in Gandhi's life a Western journalist asked, 'Mr. Gandhi, you've been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years. Don't you ever feel like taking a few weeks off and going for a vacation?' Gandhi laughed and said, 'Why? I am always on vacation.' Because he had no personal irons in the fire, no selfish concerns involved in his work, there was no conflict in his mind to drain his energy." 
— Eknath Easwaran in The Compassionate Universe

He was happy and at peace - I could illustrate this simply through a smile and him giving something? - The flip flop story

My group crit was helpful, it helped me pinpoint the message about Gandhi that I want to communicate and how I want to portray him. I need to think of ways to show the main themes peace, freedom, non violence and leader. I am still unsure about how literal to be, do I include associated imagery, the person or both? I think at the moment I am hoping to use a combination of the two but in the simplest way possible, I don't want my work to become over complicated when we have been given such a simple brief.