Trumping the Trump

People who regularly read this blog probably know that I dislike Donald Trump immensely. He represents everything I despise about the blue-suited, autocratic, patriarchal despots who have traditionally held power on planet earth. These men are destructive and usually sexist - though many would say they 'love' women. Phhhttt! I've tried but I can't unhear: 'grab 'em by the pussy'.

Out of sheer frustration I have resorted to parody or, as we would say in Australia (and as I explain it to my students), 'taking the piss'. I have to admit that it gives me a degree of self-satisfaction in a very frustrating world.

The following images demonstrate how I create these parodies in the form of digital collage.

First step is to find the highest resolution base image I can of my subject in a pose I can work with. You can see here how I have found some guy in a blue suit with his hands up, cut it away from it's original background, found another photo of Trump with his mouth open (which isn't difficult), similarly isolated it from its background and plonked it on the other guy's body.

In the image below I have applied some effects to a photo of the Whitehouse to create an appropriate background. I've also manipulated the mouth a little with the Liquify tool to make Donald's crying look more 'belligerent'. As in 'waaaahhhhhhhhhhh' - the sound a pissed off baby might make. 

I've also erased the figure's hands so I can replace them. I've then found another photo (I think I Googled 'baby crying'), cut out the section around the eyes and transferred it onto Trump's stupid head. You can see where I have started drawing into the suit to integrate Trump's head shot with the body.

In the image above I've worked on the suit, shirt and tie a bit more and blended the new eyes into Donald's head. Hopefully now he's starting to look more like a spoilt brat chucking a tantrum.

In the final - which still needs a bit more drawing - I have Googled images of children's hands, cut them out, transferred them to the body and started drawing into them to make them more consistent with the colours and style of the head.

The background, hands, body and head are all on different layers so I can work on each individually and move things around easily. I can adjust colour, tone and composition.

I haven't quite finished because it came to me as an image of Trump bawling like a baby without a caption. I'm not sure if there will be a speech bubble with dialogue yet - I'll have to wait for some smart arse comment to leap out at me.

Images: Randomly Googled photos (for which I didn't get references). Rightly or wrongly, parody is one of the only times you don't have to respect intellectual property rights. Yep - it's stated clearly in copyright law.