John McCain

I've recently decided that I was going to focus my time on one aspect of my art. Pick a general theme and run with it for a while.  I opted to work on caricatures and wanted to focus on politics and musical groups. 

My first project is going to be the leading presidential candidates.  I started off with John McCain for a few reasons:

1. The epic Obama v. Clinton democratic nominee thing is still raging on.  Perhaps Texas and Ohio can clear things up this coming week.  So I didnt want to dive into one person and then find out that the other actually wins the thing. 

2. It's a blast drawing creepy, wrinkly old dudes.

Without really planning a concept to put behind the illustration, I just pulled out my trusty old newsprint pad and started working on a likeness.  Here is when something crazy happened, on my very first attempt I nailed it. It looked like him, felt like him and I thought the facial expression  was great.  I can't say this has ever happened before, I usually agonize over things. I'm one of them OCD perfectionists, but man this was a fun surprise. Here is the sketch. 

After I banged that out I scanned it in, cleaned it up,  erased out his suit and drew in the outline as well as the hands and gun.  I then began coloring Mr. Mccain in good old photoshop.  I use a lot of layers but I condensed them all here just to give you an overall scope.

 

After I combined everything I thought the jacket looked a little too flat so I brought back in the original hatch work from my sketch and laid it over the black and ended up with this.

I'm planing this to work as a little dipdych with the Democratic nominee, which will stand to the left of this piece.  I'm hoping to get started on that right after the primaries on the 4th. Hopefully I'll have a better idea of who to draw. 

currently reading: "Epileptic" by David B.

currently listening to: Colour Revolt- "Plunder Beg and Curse"