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

Sherlock Holmes used an iPad and Abraham Lincoln was a Biker

sketch for "Sherlock with an iPad" visit stevensalerno.com

 "Sherlock with an iPad" visit stevensalerno.com

 "Honest Abe Motoring" visit stevensalerno.com

 "Brothers At Bat" illustrated by Steven Salerno  pub date: April 2012

final illustration from "Brothers At Bat" illustrated by Steven Salerno  Visit stevensalerno.com

Visit stevensalerno.com to view all my portfolio samples.


Every year since about 1992 I have advertised my illustration work in all the various illustration directories via self-promotional ads, with WORKBOOK being one of them (and it being the directory that has consistently yielded the best results for me). This year WORKBOOK altered their longtime usual book format, from being one 8x10" sized book released in February, to two smaller 7x9" sized books with one released in March and the other in September. (distributed for free to about 18,000 art directors across the country and abroad)

In the current 2011 September Workbook#33 that is out now, my ad page (shown above) is of a nostalgic 1940's scene with two golfers engaged in a match and a small gallery following their play. It's my charcoal drawing blended, via Photoshop, with a gouache painted background then with some added digital color. This golf image is actually one of my personal golf images found on my golf art site, SASgolf.com, but I liked it so much I decided to use it to also advertise my illustration site, stevensalerno.com. 

Having elected to also advertise in next year's 2012 WORKBOOK#34 illustration books as well, I had to prepare the new artwork for the March 2012 book last month and get it out to the WORKBOOK production department in Los Angeles. And since I really liked the look and feel of the "golf image ad" seen in the current WORKBOOK illustration directory I decided to create another "retro" topic image again. I doodled out a rough preliminary concept (shown above) of the legendary fictional character Sherlock Holmes hunting a trail of footprints with a magnifying glass (his cliche pose) but gave this cliche scene a modern twist by supplying Sherlock with an iPad 2 and his "magnifying glass" being an app on the iPad's screen. Solving crimes just became a bit easier in foggy old London town!

The final illustration of Sherlock Holmes to be used as the 2012 WORKBOOK illustration directory ad (shown above) was created by blending a charcoal and wax pencil drawing, via Photoshop, onto a painted gouache background (the texture created by flicks of paint from a toothbrush) and then adding digital color and effects. Originally I made the scene with a bluish-gray foggy background, but then decided to make the background clearer and employed a red-lavender color theme to make the whole image feel much more contemporary.

I enjoyed creating the "Sherlock" image so much, having to faithfully depict this character from the past, yet also giving it some modern interest, that I then created the next image shown above... President Abraham Lincoln as a biker... kind of like Marlon Brando in the 1953 rebel biker film, "The Wild One." I was wondering what Honest Abe did to get away from all the pressures of the Oval Office and came up with the fantasy that he was a rugged biker type who toured the countryside on his Harley to clear his head. I gave him a caricature extra lean look, leather jacket (no helmet law back in 1864!) and a blank gaze from extreme political fatigue. The motorcycle he is riding is a rough blend of 1930's and '40's bikes... and admittedly without bothering much with actual engineering details to the bike. The illustration was created by blending, via Photoshop, my crayon and gouache drawing of Abe and the bike with a Civil War era newspaper article as the background. The colors were then all done digitally in Photoshop.

How did I get caught up in this "retro" kick I wondered? I did not have to fathom this mystery very long, realizing it was because I had recently done all the illustrations for the picture book "Brothers At Bat" written by Audrey Vernick. It's the new children's book being published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (to be released in spring 2012) and is the true life story of 12 brothers who formed their own semi-pro baseball team and played in the 1930's, '40's and '50's and were honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. I had such fun drawing the period clothing, uniforms, cars, etc... for this baseball book that I guess the feeling of it spilled over and became the spark which lead me to create the Sherlock Holmes and Abe Lincoln "retro" images. The final images shown above are a sneak peek at a couple of the illustrations from "Brothers At Bat." Look for it in book stores, and on the Amazon and Barnes & Nobles web sites next spring!