Album Cover Commission

My friend Cameron makes music under the name Disfiguring the Goddess. He called me a few weeks ago and asked me artwork for his new album. It was a "here's the idea I was going for when I made the music now do whatever you want based on that" type of conversation.

He sent me some pictures of a friend of his to use as visual reference. I used it as a jumping off point. I did some straight up drawings of her right from the photos. 

There was one picture with horrible lighting and bad framing that I really liked. My first idea was to do a straight up painting of that photo. Trying to capture the blurriness and distortion of it. It was a pretty simple idea. But the muses, I guess, had other plans.

You can see how the idea progressed in this picture below. The first page was mostly portraits drawn from the references he sent me. I got some other ideas that I wasn't super excited about.

You can see where I start getting more detailed and writing stuff down. 

I was driving to the art supply store and the idea just hit me. 

A Kali-like figure with tree branches for arms, each branch holding something from the lyrics, wearing a cloak that has nothing in it, sitting on an ordinary mattress with water on the floor.

The idea sounds ridiculous in language. Art>Language in my opinion. So I drew the map version of it.

These "map" drawings are becoming more significant in my art process. The visual idea pops into my head,  I scribble it out as quick as I can then label stuff so I remember what it was.

Then it's time to do the work. 

I drew some different compositions for it.

I went and took some reference photos of a friend, which she asked me not to share. 

Then I built the maquette, which is shown at the top of this post. I've been drawing different versions using the maquette to help me with the light and shadows.

I'll share the process of making the maquette in another post soon.

I'm getting close to starting the actual painting. First I'm going to finish figuring out the drawing, then paint a small color study, then start painting.

Happy March 9th Everybody

I'm going back to the gallery tonight to do more of my grotesque portraits. 

I always say "heck" in my class.  "get the paints the heck out of the cabinet,"
"Sit the Heck down,"  "what the heck are you doing?"

One of the girls started singing "The wheels on the bus go what the heck. heck heck heck. heck heck heck." 

And that's been stuck in my head for about 2 hours.

Have Fun

Goodnight Sweeties