I would remove that text.

Because of the language, the punk writing, or the whole story behind it?

I think the separate elements of the design don’t really come together cohesively. The style of the boombox does not match the style of the woman. The distressed treatment on the cloud and background element does not match the non-distressed look of the woman, boombox, and text. The font doesn’t seem to fit stylistically with the more ornate elements. This gives the piece of the effect of it being a bunch of dissimilar things from different sources pasted together. Granted I don’t know much about this case or this band, I don’t understand how this graphic conveys anything about them, their music or the injustice they’re experiencing.

Did you thumbnail this out before you started working on this? If not I’d recommend trying that out with future pieces, definitely helps to nail down potential problems before you actually start working. Anyway, welcome to DBH and good luck!

I think at the very least you’ll need to remove the text because it seems a bit too profane for DBH policy.

thanks thestray, for taking the time, —yes, this is far from ready to sub yet, and I wanted to blend it more thoroughly too, for sure its all still in a sketchy kind of state, and yes, thats right, maybe the whole pussy riot thing is another theme, — for future works, as it is part of a contemporary nightmare happening to a lot of russian and other artists.

Not very wholesome. I would think of something else cleaner though.

Maybe some texture in the bg would be nice, just to make everything look like it’s not sitting soo flat. And the design looks very serious and detailed but the font comes off as a bit playful, but nice work.