Hi Kids,

As I’ve mentioned here before, I also write for the great blog Basket of Kisses, which is a site devoted to quality TV and entertainment, with its main emphasis on Mad Men.   Well, every week I submit art found around the web for the ‘Fan Art Thursday’ post.   This week, I submitted my own art! It’s called ‘EVOLVERS’ and I’ve been working two weeks on it.   This was inspired by the Mad Men  episode “Lady Lazarus” where Don Draper first listened to Revolver by The Beatles.  Unfortunately, the first track he hears is the incredible “Tomorrow Never Knows” which wasn’t the Beatle fare he was expecting at all.  He tears the needle off the LP before it ends.

I’ve been a Beatle fan forever, and Revolver is one of my favorite albums of all time.  As a child, the intense cover  collage by Klaus Voorman fascinated and scared me at the same time (those photo eyes!).  But as time went on I grew to appreciate it for its awesomeness (and that’s a word I never use).

Anyway, having my two favorite worlds of Mad Men and The Beatles collide, I was inspired to make this homage to artist Voorman, Mad Men, and Revolver, and went straight to work on this soon after the episode. Here’s how I made it:

First, I had to find suitable images of Peggy, Don, Roger, and Joan for the cover. Here’s the first group, I collaged them with my  old Printmaster 16 program and made them black and white, then printed this up to look like and old Xerox print:

This Don (lower left) is different from the final image, I was delighted to find an image of him where he was in the exact same position as Ringo on the original.   Here’s the second revision: 

Then I made this one the Xerox version :

Then I used tracing paper to get the basic outline, and scanned it into my computer, adding paint details with my Adobe Photoshop,  and using the eraser tool a lot!

Once this was done, I reviewed a bunch of pictures that I thought would work to represent the changes that the cast of Mad Men went through in this season (5).  Don married Megan. Joan had a baby, Roger had an acid trip, etc. After getting the drawing organized, I switched the art back to Printmaster 16, and cut and pasted images in a collage, especially trying to match elements of Mad Men with the elements of the original Revolver album.  (e.g.  I have Peggy crying in the approximate space where Paul is ‘crying’ on the original). Since Don is in Ringo’s position and Roger in John’s, I corresponded Beatle and Mad Men images in like poses.  I was delighted to find a pic of Jon Hamm on the set from “Tomorrowland” when he’s in his swim trunks.  I stretched it with Printmaster, making it reminiscent of the stretched picture of Ringo in an old bathing suit on Revolver.

I continued to tweak and switch around the elements until I was satisfied, also making sure that Peggy’s flip interacted with the collage and, of course adding the famous eyes and lips to make it look like Revolver. I especially love how Joan mimics George.

I then thought ‘How am I going to reference Mad Men and The Beatles with the title of this piece?  The answer was right in front of me. so I dropped the R and added the S, and Revolver became Evolvers!  Don’t you love it when stuff comes together?   Now I’m no Klaus Voorman, but I’m delighted with how this turned out!

Then I copied and transferred this back to Adobe Photoshop, fixing all the final details until I had the final product…Ta-da!  (Whew!)  Enjoy! – Therese

Be sure to click on image to see full size!  And check out Basket of Kisses, it’s fun!