Editorial Cartoon

Artist Statement

For this piece, the assignment was to draw a social or political issue we see, so I decided to draw President Trump. I was inspired not only by Donald Trump's characteristically cartoonish physical features, I also used my own view and opinion on him. As I was sketching, I was thinking of different ways to divide his multi-sided character, which is how I initially came to drawing four different Trump's. First and foremost, there had to be the Donald Trump we see plainly, however there is also the Trump we had to learn to deal with, the liar, the devil, and the clown. Over the past years, these 'personalities' of Donald Trump have greatly influenced my view of him, and certainly not for the better. I chose to incorporate the three Trump's as shadows of the original, because they are a part of his character that always follow him around. The way you act or think or feel is not something you can just leave behind, it always follows you around, and in the case of Trump, he seems to have three shadows due to his tumultuous way of being.

This drawing involved a lot of sketching and planning, always reconsidering what angle and what size I wanted to use. First I wanted to do merely one single shadow, however I later evolved it to three to strengthen and emphasize my point of view. Once I had my basic idea down, I moved to transfer my sketch onto watercolor paper. However, I quickly noticed that the format seemed small considering I wanted to draw and paint in some detail to create visible texture. So, after sketching out my idea once again on a bigger piece of paper, I used a black fine tip pen to outline everything. After having my sketch down in something lasting, I erased away all pencil lines and moved onto the watercolor paints. Again, Donald Trump has a very signature face, so I tried to match his skin tone and hair color the best I could to make it as recognizable as possible. As I painted the shadows, I decided to keep the color scheme monochrome to provide some unity, however, I did want to add some color and emphasis on the nose and the devils horns and tail. After the watercolor had dried, I went over all the lines once more with the pen as they had been slightly covered and toned down.

Typically, I like to stick to dry and 'safe' mediums, my typically focus being pens. However, as illustrations are often done with watercolor, I chose to experiment a bit with my technique. My project evolved quite a bit, especially during the sketching and planning process. I had many ideas of what I wanted to do as an editorial cartoon, all of which Donald Trump was the main subject of. After choosing my final sketch idea, I had to plan some more with the layout as I wanted to have space and contrast to separate the shadows and the main Trump. At first I had an idea for a caption, however it didn't seem to fit the way the facial expressions and hand gestures came out, and I am of the opinion the piece speaks for itself. Either you agree with my statement and recognize without the use of words or you don't.