This is a watercolor painting. Image size is 22″x30″ (56x76cm). The text is in Russian and translates as “Our hackers are the best!” This is a commissioned artwork. My client, Marcus Ranum, who is an American computer security consultant, wanted a Soviet-style propaganda poster about Russian hackers. (Have you noticed how in America people talk about Russian hackers all the time?)
My client wanted this artwork to depict a stern-looking and badass Russian hacker working with a teleprinter, more specifically, a Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter. That’s how these things look like:
For those of you who are interested in seeing how artists make their works, here’s an image of the work in progress.
This time I made the lineart digitally. For obvious reasons, I wasn’t going to sketch on a huge sheet of watercolor paper (this painting is 22″x30″). Instead I drew the lineart in photoshop, enlarged it, printed it on several sheets of office paper, and then I used graphite paper to transfer the lineart to a sheet of watercolor paper.
By the way, I think that Soviet propaganda posters are fascinating. Some of them are really great artworks. For this painting I tried to copy their style to some extent. I say “to some extent,” because there is no single “Soviet propaganda poster art style.” Those posters were created by many different artists, and each one of them had their own unique painting style.