Here's an Obama piece with an interesting story... just before the inauguration, there was this fantastic art show in DC called Manifest Hope: DC. You can check out some of the beautiful pieces of art
here! The guys that were putting it all together asked House Industries to do a piece for the show. By some strange twist of fate, I find out about this gig with somewhere around 10 hours to do it in 'cause it's the day before the art has to be there and I've got to hit the Fed-Ex HQ before 8:00 p.m. to drop this thing off. Now remember, I'm a pro, so I buck up and do what I gotta do, which is totally panic like a jackass for maybe 15 minutes. Luckily I had a big sack of
pizza combos on my desk ready to roll. So I wash some Combos down with a WaWa coffee and get to work, no time for high concept here so a straight up portrait is on the menu. I google some reference and start drawing and erasing and erasing some more, chasing that likeness as best I can before grabbing the ink bottle and brushes. I jumped right in with the ink, side-stepping my usual staring and thinking phases... experimenting with some dry-brushy techniques on the fly. It was a lot of fun but a bit overdone in the end and the likeness is off. I'm proud to have contributed a piece to the show and I learned some good stuff along the way. I'll be doing more on this blog, lots of experimenting and sketching too... and I'll nail that likeness somewhere down the line, I promise.
