Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Gaddafi ain't what he used to be

The ISCA forum's April competition subject is Libya's Col. Moammar Gaddafi.
I don't know if it is because his features are already a plastic-surgeried caricature, but creating this pen-and-ink (Microns and Copics--not digital!) piece didn't involve any struggle on my part; which is not necessarily a good thing. Creating art should be as much if not more of a mental process than a physical one, in my opinion, and I just kind of did this without thinking.  The most interesting part for me was doing the wispy, Larry Fine hair.
As political caricature, it isn't saying much except that he has aged badly..

...but as an American, I have the freedom to say that, in my preferred visual format of caricature, about anyone. Others are not so lucky: Libyan Cartoonist Shot While Drawing Caricature of Gaddafi
That is very sobering, but not sadly, not shocking...
When the controversy about depicting Mohammed in political cartoons raged, it was more about aniconism; the difference here is that the subject is a living person, still (tenuously) in power.

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