A few friends started playing a game of Diplomacy lately, and it was suggested to me that I illustrate each player as the leader of their respective country.

Seems like good enough content for Simulacrum Sunday to me – I’ll be basing these pictures on photos and drawings done while hanging out with people. But I’ll also be adding silly hats where possible.

I started things off with John as Germany. I drew the hat (a pickelhaulbe) first and then tried to fit John in afterwards. I didn’t really use a photo reference – I think I drew him while he was playing Mah Jong. I also did this sketch relatively small – I needed to scale it up to match the later ones which means the linework looks rather different. I might redo this at some point.

Here is Kevin, who is playing as Russia. I’m told that calling this hat a ushanka would be historically inaccurate, but Russia is cold and hats like this had been around for a long time before they were used in military uniforms. I think I again started drawing the hat in a bit early, which messed a bit with my ability to get the likeness down.

Hywel is playing as Italy, thus he gets to look somewhat Pope-ish! Hopefully this is where I hit my stride. The photo I used as reference was excellent and I focused on getting all of Hywel’s features down before drawing his hat in. I also started on a fairly large scale. I think I might need to fix his eyes up though.

Diplomacy is a game of seven nations which means that I’ll need to illustrate another four players! So look out for those, uh, exciting portraits as another Sunday post (or two).

PS: Is there any hat that one can Google and not get a TF2 equivalent come up as a search result? Consider that a challenge for you punters out there at home.