As a student I had the luck to spend a few summers in the USA working and travelling. Amongst other landmarks I was able to visit Mount Rushmore one day. I saw in on TV so many times before, I could not believe that finally I get to experience it in person. I have always thought that it was such an iconic creation. Who would have thought to carve statues into the side of a mountain?
So when I was working on my creative art prints (namely the ones that were featuring iconic landmarks), I knew that Mount Rushmore had to be included in the series.
At first, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. How shall I edit it to achieve something quirky and creative? This was one of those pieces that I needed quite a bit of time for because I didn’t have a concept, all I had was an intention to make something great.
So I did what I always do when I’m uninspired: I get those things done first that don’t require creativity, only manual labour. I sourced some stock images, picked the one with the best angle and highest quality and then cut out and replaced the background (the sky). After that I extended the image a bit on both sides and on the bottom.
I don’t remember how or when the inspiration finally came, but when it did, I knew there was a lot of work ahead of me. Putting sunglasses on them seemed like a subtle idea – nothing too crazy or groundbreaking but finding the right stock images and then being able to blend them seamlessly with the rest of the image seemed like a hard and lenghty process. I tried to focus on one president and his sunglasses at a time to not get overwhelmed. I went through an endless amount of stock images before I found the perfect pair for every one of them.
Then thousands of Photoshop layers and folders and an eternity of cropping, blending and shading later…..Mount Rush No More was finally done.
These posters are available for purchase right here. There are many different sizes and optional frames to choose from!
art from scratch 