Friday, February 26, 2010

Something Like An Obamenon

'

Here's a poster commissioned by none other than Cleveland Bachelor Dr. Justin Vaughn. I've drawn President Obama a couple of times now, and I think this is at the least the most accurate I've been able to get. He's kind of a hard nut to crack, our Prez.



Because this isn't for a rock show, or DIY type event, I knew I wanted to keep it somewhat more straight forward and cleaner looking, design-wise. I still wanted it to be pretty raw though. So, I sort of knew my approach from the start. Keeping the suit black, creating an almost silhouette against the gritty background, made for a perfect platform to place that block of text at the bottom. In the past I've also drawn The President in a light blue ...almost leisure suit. I definitely didn't want to do that.



Again, elements of grittyness, I drew this flag with a broken old crusty brush, just splattering the ink and making a mess. I drew the stars separately.



I did look at some photo reference of the White House, and Chicago for this, but that all went out the window in the inking stage.



I'm not sure this even needs an explanation. So instead I'll write about how today I spilled a cup of coffee inside my bag, and onto the leg underneath it. As soon as I noticed, I thought to myself "I wonder how hot that is". Turns out, not very hot. So now I smell like old coffee and I'm staying tired. What a day.



I think I like how this piece turned out. It was a nice break from some of the other things I've been working on lately. Bigger projects, long term things. Things that require grim visions and heavy lifting. Hard decisions. Making moves.

2 comments:

Jen M. said...

We love the poster, great work!

John G said...

Thanks Jen M.!