Corruption

This is a dark political piece framed in the style of one of those motivational photos that I'm sure many of you have seen on walls in offices, schools, colleges, and other places. The character is not based on anyone in particular - just a generic politician who has managed to climb his way to the highest office in the land. Promises he made to bring hope and reform to the people who elected him into office are soon cast aside in favor of money, industry, and the simple pursuit of power at all costs.

There is a great quote from the Starz TV series, "Boss", in which Kelsey Grammar (as fictional Chicago Mayor Tom Kaine) explains:

"One necessary evil leads to another until one day you can't differentiate between what's necessary and what's merely expedient and when that happens, you're done. You're a monster."

That's pretty much it.

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Everything starts with a sketch...

Then I add a layer of shadows. In this case, I utilized Sketchbook's charcoal-inspired brush set and I was really happy with how it came out.

I played around with some other brush sets in Sketchbook and thought this one was pretty interesting. I adjusted it some and worked it into the final piece as an additional layer of shadows.

This is the individual layer in which I digitally painted the blood spatters. Sketchbook has some lovely brushes for doing splatter work.

This is the individual color layer so you can see some of the extra details that went into conveying this monstrosity's skin-tone.

I compile everything together into GIMP where I've put together a background out of various certified public domain images acquired from government/national archives resources. You can see elements of the Constitution, the Great Seal, etc.

I added in some fog effects and gave the overall image a warmer, slightly golden tone...

...and then I place the final product within a frame accompanied by a famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche.