Illustration – Twentieth Century All-Stars

A little while ago, I came up with this idea of creating a series of Graphic Illustrations by depicting iconic characters from last century as if they were part of a set of baseball cards. Exactly why this idea appealed to me I’m really not sure. I suppose it’s interesting to just take these characters out of their contexts and stick them into something else for a while.

Even though these two individuals were really quite famous during their time, they were still never exactly embraced by mainstream culture. In my world though, they would have been.

In playgounds everywhere, instead of kids discussing Babe Ruth’s legendary swing, they would have been marveling over Dylan’s songs of protest or intently discussing Hunter S Thompson and Freelance Illustrator Ralph Steadman‘s booze fueled trip to the Kentucky Derby.

Initial sketch done on train

As I’m typing this, I’m looking at the two illustrations I’m about to upload along with this post and I’m wondering “Why did I choose to depict these characters in this kind of graphic illustration?” I’m thinking that a possible reason is that by confining these characters within such a conformist platform it’s accentuating their unique sense of individualism even more. Yeah, I’ll buy that. That’ll do for now.

Original Illustration

I do plan to organize my time a little better in the coming months and do a whole series of these.

Photoshop Process

Final Illustration

So who’s next? I’m thinking that Robert Crumb wouldn’t go amiss….