Received a call from Gail Boosmworth, the art buyer for DMB&B (St. Louis), to do black and white art for a Southwestern Bell TV commercial promoting 3-way calling. The commercial would feature three portraits, Queen Victoria, Catherine the Great and Cleopatra. They already had archive prints of Queen Victoria and Catherine the Great (rights purchased from a stock photo house), but needed to add a hand holding a phone to each. A stock photo for Cleopatra couldn't be located, so a new illustration would have to be created from scratch, or is that scratchboard. Well, it was going to be scratchboard, but since the existing stock photos were going to be converted to a mezzotint, Cleopatra would also have to be a mezzotint.
The commercial would promote 3-way calling and the intended audience would be young. The eyes and lips on the portraits will be replaced by the eyes and lips of actors, maybe you've seen this done on the Conan O'Brien Show. Actors would also provide the voice over. The hands holding a phone would be separate pieces of art and added to the portraits in the video stage. This allows the video guys to move the hands around, kind of a Monty Python look.

This demonstration focuses on the steps involved in creating the Cleopatra illustration. Follow the steps on the left to see how it was done.