Barrack the Wizard

Got a call late Thursday night from the AD at The Weekly Standard, with this little assignment. Of course Washington are 8 hours behind London time, so it was only late afternoon there. The deadline was again short, and I had a gig Friday night (tonight), so I didn't want to be still working on it Friday afternoon. I've therefore had only 1.5 hours sleep in the last 48 hours. Call me crazy, but I stayed up till 10am Friday morning to finish. So from call to delivering artwork, this was a 12 hour turnaround. I even managed to stay awake for the gig. Woohoo!

The illustration is to accompany an article about how Obama is casting his magic spell over the American public. When they said they wanted him as a wizard, we both were thinking of a Fantasia wizard, as opposed to Harry Potter. They wanted a more quizzical, but purposeful Obama. He's often drawn smiling, which is great because of the teeth, but this was an interesting challenge, considering the expression and 'camera' angle.