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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.
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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!
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This is obviously the beardless version.