Abe -my drawing portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

Posted here is my simple, no frills drawing of President Abraham Lincoln… Honest Abe -with his humble birth-place log cabin home seen in the background. 

I always have a ton of material, books, etc… all making a mess of my drawing table, such that I have to always push stuff out of the way to make space on the surface to actually make my art. This morning I just happened to have an old 1958 encyclopedia with all the important information on things starting with the letter “L” -so I flipped it open and was thumbing through and came to a striking photograph of President Abraham Lincoln.

I picked up a piece of paper, and with an orange crayon roughed in the sketch of Abe using the photo as my reference… and obviously I exaggerated Abe’s leanness. This took about ten minutes. Then I used a brown ink “pen-brush” to further delineate his face, followed by darkening some lines and areas with a black pen-brush, this process taking about another ½ hour. I scanned the drawing into Photoshop where in stacked layers I painted the color digitally. (the lettering of “Abe” was also done digitally) Maybe another half hour in all. Done. 

Normally I do not work that quickly unless I am just sketching of doodling… but in this case case I simply wanted to breeze through doing this portrait in a short period of time and move on with my day… I came out nicely.

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What Would Abe Do?

I am constantly doodling... and I guess because of the current Spielberg film, LINCOLN starring Daniel Day Lewis, being on my mind, I recently made an ink doodle of an exaggerated Abe Lincoln, tall and thin, looking very contemplative... I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, and cleaned up the image. 

Then, because of the shooting of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, I've been pondering what our early politicians might think about the current state of gun violence in American society (specifically regarding our "right to bear arms" and automatic assault weapons). So, I drew an image of an AK-47 with an American flag sticking out of the barrel... and also scanned this drawing into Photoshop and added it to my image of Abe Lincoln. Next, I added digital color... with the red of the flag's red stripes bleeding down the gun and making a pool of red on the ground... obviously suggestive of blood. The two images combined create a conceptual image reflecting the current debate on the issue of automatic weapon ownership, the increased instances of mass murder shootings, and if gun ownership rights as it was initially intended by our political fore-fathers needs a major overhaul relative to today's society.

Even though I do not create these kind of social/political drawings anymore as part of my regular illustration career... they are still interesting to create, even if they are just for myself. Most art directors today don't realize that back in the early 1980's I created many social/political illustrations for the Op Ed Page of The New York Times! (see an earlier post about this)

However, (sometimes) what is old is new again... and if you visit my illustration web site, click on the NEW STUFF portfolio section where you will see that these new images are indeed looking a bit like illustrations I created 25-30 years ago... moodier and darker in feel. Take a look.

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What Would Abe Do? by Steven Salerno     visit stevensalerno.com