Wow, here it is: the first post to my art blog-journal.
I'm currently working on two projects neither of which happen to be 'fine art'. The first is a stained glass mosaic table and the second is a CD cover illustration. I'm about half way through the table and you're just in time for the beginning of the CD cover. I'll start with the CD cover.
The cover is for the first release from a newly formed Chicago label called BoneRecords. It's a comp CD that's going to be entitled "Play with the Dogs". The concept presented by the staff is: a practice space, a punk-ish type of guy, some dogs and beer. Voila!
I remember 'back in the day' before I had the internet, a scanner and Photoshop. After sketching for hours and looking through endless magazines for images, I'd spend hours and hours at Kinko's tracing, cut and pasting and photo-copying a workable layout. It's a lost art for sure. Although, I can't say that I miss it. But without that style of cut-and-paste layout / art we wouldn't have had any of the great punk rock posters and flyers I've seen over the years. (What am I talking about? See: Winston Smith)
Nowadays, I do a few searches on the Internet to source my material and I'm usually done. If I can't find what I need I'll get a digital camera and shoot the material myself, upload it a few seconds later and POW! I've got my source material. Kinko's comes into play only for enlargements really; it's an 'in-and-out' type of visit now.
So for this CD cover I did some searches and did some surfing (the winning searches were: 'marshall practice space' and 'your dog gallery'). After I found the right images for the practice space and the dogs, I needed the guy that was going to be sitting in the space. In this case, I knew exactly what pose I needed and the odds of finding it online without hours of searching weren't very good. Time to recruit a friend to sit for the pose I need. Snap a digital pic and POW! Done.
Next, I open up Photoshop and 'flip this horizontally', 'crop that a little', 'punch up the contrast'- print out the images and I'm ready to sit down in the studio and sketch. I like the technology for hot-rodding my source images to spec, but I generally don't do my composition layouts in Photoshop. I'll sit down with the images and sketch some thumbnails first.
So after some sketching here's the rough composition. The guy, the dogs, the gear (a Marshall and an Ampeg 8x10 made the cut)...details to come. It's on drafting vellum at the moment. (easy to erase and manipulate lines with a kneaded gum eraser)
This project is: Commissioned- BoneRecords comp CD illustration.
Time this session: 1.75hrs. | Total time on this project: 1.75hrs.
I'm currently working on two projects neither of which happen to be 'fine art'. The first is a stained glass mosaic table and the second is a CD cover illustration. I'm about half way through the table and you're just in time for the beginning of the CD cover. I'll start with the CD cover.
The cover is for the first release from a newly formed Chicago label called BoneRecords. It's a comp CD that's going to be entitled "Play with the Dogs". The concept presented by the staff is: a practice space, a punk-ish type of guy, some dogs and beer. Voila!
I remember 'back in the day' before I had the internet, a scanner and Photoshop. After sketching for hours and looking through endless magazines for images, I'd spend hours and hours at Kinko's tracing, cut and pasting and photo-copying a workable layout. It's a lost art for sure. Although, I can't say that I miss it. But without that style of cut-and-paste layout / art we wouldn't have had any of the great punk rock posters and flyers I've seen over the years. (What am I talking about? See: Winston Smith)
Nowadays, I do a few searches on the Internet to source my material and I'm usually done. If I can't find what I need I'll get a digital camera and shoot the material myself, upload it a few seconds later and POW! I've got my source material. Kinko's comes into play only for enlargements really; it's an 'in-and-out' type of visit now.
So for this CD cover I did some searches and did some surfing (the winning searches were: 'marshall practice space' and 'your dog gallery'). After I found the right images for the practice space and the dogs, I needed the guy that was going to be sitting in the space. In this case, I knew exactly what pose I needed and the odds of finding it online without hours of searching weren't very good. Time to recruit a friend to sit for the pose I need. Snap a digital pic and POW! Done.
Next, I open up Photoshop and 'flip this horizontally', 'crop that a little', 'punch up the contrast'- print out the images and I'm ready to sit down in the studio and sketch. I like the technology for hot-rodding my source images to spec, but I generally don't do my composition layouts in Photoshop. I'll sit down with the images and sketch some thumbnails first.
So after some sketching here's the rough composition. The guy, the dogs, the gear (a Marshall and an Ampeg 8x10 made the cut)...details to come. It's on drafting vellum at the moment. (easy to erase and manipulate lines with a kneaded gum eraser)
This project is: Commissioned- BoneRecords comp CD illustration.
Time this session: 1.75hrs. | Total time on this project: 1.75hrs.