The newspapers are Jutarnji List, the biggest in Croatia by circulation. I’ve been doing illustrations for them for 4-5 months.

Here is the whole story, with a timeline:

Wednesday 2018-08-08 12:05,

Email from the editor, with the summary of the text from the journalist Teofil Pancic, one of the big names in Serbia. The story is about the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, and the attacks on critics of his politics of all sides by the media under his control. It also talks about his false identifying with the former progressive prime minister  of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic who was assassinated in 2003.

So, I start thinking how to translate the story into a picture. This time I am fine, I have 2 days to finalize it. The time is shorter usually…I follow the situation, and the insane idea of identifying the two leaders. More than once, years ago, Vucic said he was happy when Djindjic, his enemy and political opponent, was assassinated. So much that he got drunk that day! That was one of the three times he got drunk in the whole life! Former prime minister of Serbia is perceived as a progressive reformist leader, the one who was initiating positive and difficult changes after the fall of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. He was assassinated because of that, and the real initiators of the murder were never revealed or punished.

Prior to this there was a one more big exchange of ugly mud attacks between the politicians of Serbia and Croatia, the situation is tense… I sketched many ideas, but finally I sent these to the editor next day early in the afternoon:

Thursday 2018-08-08 14:04,

001 – Vucic sews a target on his suit  

002- Playing the role of a victim, like St Sebastian:

003 – selfie with the picture of the assassinated newly found “BFF”

004 addition to the selfie – DJ Vucicevic, the owner and the editor of the trash tabloid INFORMER, painting wounds on his president. The tabloid Informer, over the past 6 yers announced many plans by enemies of all kinds to assassinate Vucic. Some people call it DEZINFORMER!

005- addition to the previous – After the assassination few streets in different cities in Serbia were named after the dead prime minister Djindjic. There is a boulevard in Belgrade with that name. And the tables with the name were often vandalized or torn off by the groups connected to Aleksandar Vucic…

006 - addition to the previous – Aleksandar Vucic himself was adding tables with the name of Ratko Mladic instead…

While waiting to the answer from the newspaper, I worked on another job… then, my kids wanted to go to the beach…

Thursday 2018-08-09 18:27 – I was on the beach with my kids when I got the answer from the editor. They liked the idea 002 and the 006, but they were not sure if it was clear that he is taking a selfie… They sent me the article to read it…I still thought that the idea with the selfie is the right one, the art director agreed with me…and the editor was right, some people may not understand that AV was making a selfie. So I gave a selfie stick to the guy, and solved a problem…

Thu 2018-08-09 21:08,  I sent this:

007 – Using a selfie stick:

Thu 2018-08-09 21:24 - I got the OK from the editor, she said selfie stick is a very good idea… and I started working with my watercolors:

I worked until late that night. Here is the first layer of colors…

I do the details bigger. Here’s the face of Aleksandar Vucic…

This is the portrait of the dead prime minister Zoran Djindjic

This is DJ Vucicevic. He has his tongue out because he is focused on his assignment…

In the morning I scanned the watercolors.  Here is the final sum of all watercolor, before retouching…

And this is the final artwork. I did the retouching digitally in the morning….

Fri 2018-08-10 11:52 I sent the final illustration via wetransfer:

It took me less then 48 hours for the whole process. And less then 24 hours later, this morning,  I bought the newspapers on the local newsstand!  

Sometimes the time to execute the whole process is much shorter, it used to happen within few hours…

After many years I still have a big pleasure to see my work printed, there is some magic in seeing it in newspapers. I believe watercolors look very good on newsprint paper!

Thanks for reading this!