Oueens of the Stone Age

A poster I made for Big Hands for an after-party that actually I don't think ever happened. I was at the Queens gig myself but was so soaked through with sweat after dancing all night the only thing calling me after the gig was a long shower so I never really found out for sure. Anyway the poster was a great brief and I really enjoyed making it AND it became the last of 18 gig posters to feature in my final exhibition, but more on that later.

NEW YORK DOLLS

Another commission for Big Hands who are throwing an after-gig-shindig for what should be an amazing event at the neighbouring Academy. I was asked to use an original b&w photograph of the band from the 70s but I just couldn't resist making my own drawing of it and using lots of super-trashy colours and prints.

Beach House

This is the poster I made to commemorate the Beach House gig at Manchester Cathedral. It was an incredible show in a truly stunning setting so it only seemed right to use one of my photographs and to let the incredible scene speak for itself. The glowing cones that rose up behind Victoria, Alex & co. lighting the smoke as it drifted up into the gothic arches was a sight that I hope to never forget. Hopefully with a bit of tweeking on Photoshop and some simple text I have managed to capture that ethereal scene.

Original Photograph (below).

Final poster (below).

Mark Lanegan

Below is my Mark Lanegan poster in various stages of completion. Although I don't normally like to use found images of the musicians I've been making posters about I couldn't resist this photo as I knew it would make a fantastic drawing. It also really captures the utter coolness of this giant of a man.

Original photo (below) found somewhere on the net? Unfortunately I can't seem to find it anymore to link back, apologies to the photographer.

Drawing (below) made from the photograph. When working from a photo I try to work quite expressively and don't attempt to draw every part allowing for some negative space. This also helps as it allows some room for the all important text.

Drawing with some parts of the original photo collaged back into the drawing to provide some contrast (below).

Finished poster with textured layer in background to add 'grunge' (below).

Franz Ferdinand

Another poster completed this week, this time for Franz Ferdinand. The idea bizarrely came from the artwork for the Grizzly Bear album Vekatimest or at least the artist who created it William O'Brien. With his work in mind I began playing around with some lino and making rather crude triangle prints on different surfaces. I also wanted the poster to have a kind of Russian Constructivist feel to it as a nod to this Franz Ferdinand album cover. I also had in mind an image of lots of close-up eyeballs, one for each member of the band repeated over and over. Anyway after a few false starts and a bit of experimentation I finally reached a conclusion which sort of has a few of all these elements in it.


First attempt (below) which took me about 20 minutes to make. Speed is never the sign of a good poster so I scrapped it.

Another experiment (below) with lino and collage, making eyelashes for the eyes using the triangles.

Final poster before text and colour adjustments (below).

Final poster (below).

J.Mascis and the Fog

Current poster for J.Mascis and the Fog completed. When I began I had in mind a kind of Wild-West 'Wanted' poster. What I actually ended up with was a bit different but hopefully has a similar feel without being a cliché. Anyway to start with I drew each band member and applied a sepia filter to each one in Photoshop. I used a found image of a picture frame to place each one into and added some handmade text. I liked the idea that there was a bit of a hierarchy within the band, what with J.Mascis being a bit of a legend due to the success of his main band Dinosaur Jr. and with the other members of The Fog regularly changing. I don't know if this really comes through but I'm pretty happy with the results all the same.

The Dead Weather

I've recently made a poster for the Dead Weather gig I went to last year. As usual I had a strong theme in mind, particularly in terms of colour which I knew should be a palette of moody greys. They are definitely the most gothic of Jack White's bands and so I wanted to evoke this darkness. I suppose in a way I was rather literally translating the words 'Dead Weather' by using the idea of a traditional weather house but subverting it so that it became more like a haunted house, the sort of place that the band might hang out in. This is actually the first poster where I have had to use a number of techniques to achieve my vision; the band members and text are hand-drawn, the house was made in Illustrator and it was all brought together in Photoshop.

Detail of house and band (below)


Original drawing for Jack and Alison (below). Where have you seen them before?

Close up of hand-drawn text (below)

Finished poster (below)

The Cribs

Looking back through my photos from Berlin I found the perfect photograph to turn into a poster for The Cribs. This rather amazing/disgusting public toilet in a squat in central Berlin seemed quite appropriate as a symbol of the kind of raw punk undertones present in their sound. I imagine that as a young band they probably played some real dives and had dressing rooms that were probably just as filthy.

All I really did to the original photograph was change the colours so that they were really saturated and in-your-face then added some text. Simple, my quickest poster yet.

Before

After

Grizzly Bear

I've just finished a poster commemorating the Grizzly Bear gig I went to at Manchester Cathedral last November. Originally I was going to use the watercolour (below) that I did based on a photograph of the band members. However, as much as possible I want to avoid using found images as I think it would be more interesting to create totally original responses.

With this in mind I thought about including an image of the cathedral as it's such a unique venue for a rock show so it made for a rather extraordinary gig. I hit on the idea of a grizzly bear climbing the cathedral tower King-Kong style fairly early on but it proved a bit too tricky so I settled for him grabbing onto one of the spires instead. Either way I'm quite happy with the results.

To create the image I used a similar technique to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs poster by using the pen tool in Illustrator to create shapes and build up each component of the poster. I quickly mocked up what I wanted on Photoshop and kept a jpeg in the background as a guideline of where things went in relation to each other. It's probably a bit small to appreciate on here but I tried to add more detail to the bear's face to contrast with the more simplistic shapes elsewhere, hopefully adding character.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I have been spending a lot of time in my sketchbook recently, gathering images which might be relevant for the gig posters I plan to make such as album art work, on-stage photos, existing gig posters for the same bands etc. Whilst putting together these pages for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs I came up with an idea for the poster which is very much inspired by this crazy Navajo-esque poncho that Karen O wears regularly on stage. I thought that I could eventually create the bright neon colours and graphic shapes digitally in Illustrator.

First however I thought that i'd make something by hand so using some coloured card and a craft knife I put together the paper-cut below which is quite effective when the different coloured card is staggered a bit so that all the colours are visable at once.

I then made this drawing ready for scanning into Illustrator (below).

Once I had traced the image and converted it into a vector it immediately took on a new quality however I decided that if I was really going to exploit the possibilities of Illustrator I really ought to create a drawing using the software from scratch.

To give me something to work from I kept the original image of Karen on a layer so that I could refer back to it if needed (below).

Gradually I developed the poster adding in Nick and Brian as well as some text, all using the pen tool. As it was my first attempt I decided to keep all the shapes angular and not actually convert them into curves. This was partly because i really liked the effect it created and it seemed to suit the spiky vibe of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs music and partly because I'm not brave enough yet.

Final poster below. In an addmitedly unusual attack of perfectionism I realised that Nick and Brian needed to swap sides as Nick is always to the right of Karen when they perform on stage. Compositionally it also works much better now that Nick is pointing into the image rather than away. I also left the background blank so that I could print it out on different papers. It looks quite good on a cool grey colour.

Photo Screen printing at Hot Bed Press

Currently I'm in the midst of a 5 week screen printing course (one evening a week) at Hot Bed Press in Salford. I really didn't know what to expect but Mandy our tutor is absolutely brilliant, really patient and clearly very enthusiastic about screen printing. So far we have approached it using both stencils and by exposing screens and although it can get quite technical and there is a lot to remember I am determined to get really good at it as the results are just so satisfying. Below are some of my outcomes which vary in quality but which also have a lo-fi feel which I appreciate and think is rather appropriate for a gig poster.

Original Photoshop image of Beth Ditto of The Gossip that I traced and made into a stencil (below)

The resulting single-colour print, one of the better ones (below)

Adding another colour brings with it inevitable complications however when your registration goes awry (below) it can actually look rather good.

Spiritualized poster turned into a two-colour screen print (below). The registration on the cloud was particularly tricky.

Original poster for Silversun Pickups (below).

And resulting print (below). This one turned out to be my nemesis as it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried I was always missing some of the finer detail. Mandy assured me that it is possible to produce very fine prints using a screen but that possibly some of the photographic emulsion may have hardened on the screen and was blocking it. There was nothing else to do but to start from scratch and expose the screen again. Unfortunately however, the same happened again which meant that it must have been a fault of the original photocopy (not dark enough).

Feeling a bit defeated I decided that this poster may just have to remain as a digital image instead. I have tried (below) to create a similar screen printed look using Photoshop.

New Year, New Idea.

So 2010 is the year when I finally get round to making the kind of art that interests me most of all, the kind of thing that I see in books and on walls and on other people's blogs and I think: that's the kind of thing I want to make. This was partly inspired by looking through this recently purchased book (below) which is a massive retrospective of some of the most successful rock poster artists that regularly feature on gigposters.com but also because I feel like so far on my Masters I have played it safe and created the sort of work that I've always made. Work which really doesn't excite me anymore.
So what do I actually plan to do, well my aim is to produce a poster for every gig I attended in 2009 (this totals around 30) as a kind of commemoration of that event. Unlike some gig poster art which at times can seem a bit random in it's content I am going to use each gig as a starting point for a poster that I feel really sums up the band and their music. I have already booked myself on to two screen printing courses as this seems like the most obvious way to produce the posters whilst also finally giving me an excuse to try out a technique that has fascinated me for some time. I feel really excited about this project and can't wait to get started!

2 pages from my sketchbook of posters gathered here, there and everywhere (above).