above (top)/ Trump: Master Trumppeteer -satirical illustration by Steven Salerno
above (middle)/ DETAIL -the cardboard puppet
above (bottom)/ DETAIL -the Master manipulating the strings
Perhaps people wonder if someone else is behind the scenes masterminding Trumps’s thoughts and actions, maybe a secret political entity is in his ear… But in my opinion it’s Trump all by himself, all the time. So I came up with this recent satirical drawing depicting President Trump as a master puppeteer (Trumppeteer) fully manipulating his own puppet in his likeness -the puppet with a mobile phone for tweeting in one hand, and a big Republican stick in the other for pounding out his campaign rhetoric on the political stage. Trump’s personal theatre of sorts, and we‘re all required to attend whether we wish to or not.
This “Trumppet” illustration was created for the editorial art service, INX (inxart.com) -and is a digital hybrid, combining some hand drawn elements scanned into Photoshop in a hierarchy of layers, with other elements drawn all digitally in Photoshop and in Adobe Illustrator, too. Some of the textures seen in the illustration are hand painted gouache on paper also scanned into Photoshop. All these various elements are composed in Photoshop to create the final look of the illustration.
Some illustrators solely specialize in political satire and social commentary, which I do not. I am definitely not known for political satire… None the less, over the many years I’ve had quite a few assignments to create illustrations depicting politicians (and celebrities too). And since I have the ability to easily render likenesses, I always enjoy such assignments. Since staring my illustration career right after graduating from Parsons School of Design in 1979 I’ve created political themed illustrations for various publications depicting: Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and now of Trump… Early in my career the most notable client was The New York Times where I created numerous Op/Ed Page drawings, a couple times depicting then President, Ronald Reagan. (My illustration of Reagan seen below was not created for The NY Times, but was created for another publication the name of which I cannot recall.)
above/ a 1982 illustration of Ronald Reagan as a Pied Piper character by Steven Salerno (litho crayon on paper)
above/ a 1982 illustration (DETAIL) of Ronald Reagan as a Pied Piper character by Steven Salerno (litho crayon on paper)
Here is a link to another recent satirical illustration I created, this one depicting Trump’s recent trip to Tokyo to attend a Sumo Tournament.
But like I said… satirical illustration, especially political commentary drawings are not my artistic forte! So visit my web site to see my many popular picture books for kids, as well as my work for advertising and magazines, etc…