TRUMPTRUMP

January 19, 2021

For these last seven days (hopefully) of TRUMPTRUMP I’m writing about the project. This is day 6, see the others at www.trumptrump.biz Today: How I did it and what is next,

The drawings would start with what was going on. Most of the time I would just do an online search for “Trump Administration” to see what they were up to. I’d find things in big newspapers, small newspapers, twitter feeds, trade magazines…If nothing turned up for the day that way there was always Trump’s twitter feed which never failed to be filled with horrors. I had two Google calendars for the project: “Trump” and “Trump Done” to keep track of days I might have missed.

Yes, there were days I missed and went back to once in awhile. The biggest gap was in August 2017 when the Unite the Right rally stomped all over Charlottesville where I live. I just couldn’t draw that week, but I went back later and filled in. Most days I would not plan them out but I did try (after the first few months) to have a continuity between days. I did some months as 4-panel comics. Sometimes I would plan them out in my sketchbooks, or draw from other artists’ work to steal things from them and use later.

Later in the project I would look back at past years to echo those drawings, especially at Christmas and New Years. Last fall the ones leading up to the election mirrored those in 2016, with, happily, different results.

For the first few months I drew on notecards, but once Trump took office I drew on vellum finish bristol board. I bought 12x9 in. pads of on sale and chopped the pages in half. I almost always drew in pencil using cheap mechanical pencil from Staples or wherever.

I also used a fancy .3 pencil and a few chunky graphite-holders too. The past few months I’ve also used the super-deluxe Palomino Blackwing. When I drew in ink I used a Pentel brush pen. Large black areas I filled in and any screentones were added digitally in Photoshop.

After drawing I would scan them grayscale at 600 dpi. I saved the scans, and after cropping, adjusting levels and doing a little clean up would save them with file names like 21-01-20.jpg to organize by date. I use Backblaze for off-site backup and Time Machine for local.

TRUMPTRUMP.biz is set up on tumblr. When this thing started in 2016 it was a good platform for quick sites and since I didn’t expect this to go on this long (he was supposed to LOSE) I figured it would be ok.

Tumblr has been fine but if I did this again I would set up a simple Wordpress of Drupal blog on my own space. I don’t like being at the mercy of tech bros and I plan to move TT over to my own space at some point.

I bought TRUMPTRUMP.biz as a domain which is still funny to me. .biz lol. After uploading I’d share on dedicated Facebook, instagram and twitter feeds. I’ve kept all three through the project but after it’s over I’ll be deleting Facebook at least.

Tomorrow the project is done, or rather almost done. As I had planned in 2016, for a week after he is gone I’ll draw beasts and monsters eating the goo he melted down into, pooping it out and maybe eating it again. Trump’s poison lingers.

After TRUMPTRUMP is done I’ll continue drawing LADYH8RS and USAH8RS (including all the congresspeople who voted for the coup). I’ll also draw more poetry comics and a new project, the opposite of TRUMPTRUMP, where I draw nice portraits of government workers who are helpers.

I also plan some print collections of TRUMPTRUMP, similar to the ones Retrofit made, but softcover and spanning whole years. Stay tuned.

I can’t believe this is almost over.

5:35pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/Z9snNgZaWbFQym00

(Notes: 11)