Exploring an idea

I had this idea occur to me after discussing the importance of the "nation" in alienation last week. It brought to mind some of my own reasons for feeling alienated at times, and then expanded from there into a short series of images that I had a lot of fun working on. I went digital on these so that I could sketch faster as well as open up to new possible mistakes that might change the images for the better, since drawing with a tablet is not my forte. The first one was a bit rough as I got into the swing of things, but I feel like the following three are a pretty solid trilogy of images.

Moving forward, I'd like to improve on the relevance of the speech bubbles - maybe connect them more specifically to each idea that they're representing, as well as push the images more and explore different ways to use the images I've created (such as exploring the simplicity of the line drawings versus the colored sketches). It was nice to have something a little more focused than previous work, since it gave me a goal to keep in mind when sketching each design. Not sure about the gradients, or specifically using geometric shapes in the background - since the flag each design is representing is currently a little hard to make out clearly. I'm not sure if it would come across as a good thing to have the flags each design is representing be a little obscured, or if it would be better to make it more representational.

Each design represents a sexuality or gender, and it's corresponding flag - this one being asexual. This was the first sketch, and I didn't have a solid idea in mind when sketching this, so I feel it doesn't match the other three as well. I included it anyway as a starting point, though I would like to re-create this one now that I have a more established look that I'm going for.

The second design - this one representing the transgender flag.

This one for the pride flag.

Bisexual flag. This was the last I did and I feel it has the best incorporation of relevant text with the image and all that it is meant to represent.

A variation with no color or shading - thought it looked interesting.