This is "this" weeks Village Voice cover. I did the sketch Friday afternoon, blocked in the painting Sunday afternoon and then completed it on Monday. This was a fun job to work on. The art director for the V.V. was great to work with, and that always makes my job much more enjoyable.
There were some challenges with this job. The main challenge was maintaining a strong likeness while completely changing Mayor Bloomberg's appearance. The Village Voice wanted me to paint Bloomberg as "Clubber" from Rocky Three. A funny idea, but tricky to pull off. They wanted me to "beef" him up and give him Mr. T.'s Mohawk and beard. I was concerned that it would be hard enough to tell it was Bloomberg with the muscles and Mohawk, so I did two versions. One with the beard and one without. This way they could choose the image that would work best for their needs. I'm happy I was able to pull the likeness through the beard, muscles and Mohawk! Would be fun to see Bloomberg's reaction when he sees it!
This is obviously the beardless version.
