My Sketches - Live Music Project

For some strange reason I find it easier to do some sketches based off from my moodboard rather than doing all of my mood boards, picking out my favourite designs, and then do the sketching. I just find it so much easier to generate ideas straight from the images I've been flicking through on Google... If I see something I find inspirational I tend to draw my idea straight away without thinking.

Here are my sketches for my album cover and the logo. I've taken photos of them on my phone as I don't have a scanner here, so please excuse for the low quality (and please click on the image to make them larger to view the annotations and my though processes!)

Album Cover

I first start on sketching in my A5 notepad just to get some initial ideas down

I let myself draw up as many different ideas as possible so that I didn't end up just going along with one single idea and developing it. I wanted to be open minded as possible!

Jonny Pain mentioned having a misty forest of some sort, and that they wanted the design to be similar to Iron Maiden's. From my first sketches I realised that I liked deliberately sketching trees in a very messy way, as it made it appear grungy. However I wanted to try different perspectives of trees as well. 

Now moving onto A4 to develop them further...

Here I developed my drum idea that I mentioned on my last page

Here is a summary of what my "best" designs were

This was the illustration that we had agreed on using, and so I developed it into the image that you see right below. I was inspired by the design on Metallica's album "Death Magnetic" which had many thin lines surrounding a grave. I was also inspired by Charles Keeping and used a soft graphite pen to encircle the moon and create a soft glow. However I probably needed to look at some images for reference as the trees looked a bit weird. 

While I was doing some uni work I played my Linkin Park CD as it had been ages since I had listened to them. In the middle of doing some research I heard the song "Catalyst" and immediately thought up of waves reaching up and leaking into the sun. So I moved everything out of the way and got painting!

The painting was a bit messy as I used a lot of water to get the paint to drip down the page. Didn't really expect some of it to actually go around the sun but it looks pretty cool.
Although this painting doesn't necessarily link in with the album cover's name, I wanted to experiment with watercolour on how to achieve abstract imagery. I could possibly use this technique in my final design if I choose to, because now I know how it "works". The watercolour bleed reminds me of the cracks in shattered glass or veins for some reason.

If I go down the "tree" route, then I could possibly use this technique to paint thin tendrils for the branches.  
However I feel that it doesn't reflect Jonny Pain's style, mainly because of the colours I used. 

At this point Jonny Pain then gave me the name of their album; Unbroken. So I went back to the beginning and created a mind map of all of the ideas that popped into my head that I wanted to try out.

Looking at this mind map I realised that some of my previous designs fits in, so I took those few and altered them slightly, experimenting with different techniques. 

             

I developed the idea of having a tree as they are strong, have a long life span, and so I thought that I can connect a tree really well to the word "Unbroken". I wanted to experiment with texture - being influenced by Rizza and Jansson - and so I drew many lines in the tree to build a bumpy effect to the bark. With some advice from Rizza I added more depth to some of the lines by using watercolour paint. These were her words exactly when I showed her the old version: 

"Hey, looking really good! The texture you created is great and there’s a beautiful uniqueness about each branch, so they don’t look repetitive. If you want to help make things stand out a bit, I’d add some thicker lines, made with a brush. Just a few, such as one going down the side of the tree, two or three on the lower side of branches, and a few outlining the roots. This will help create a simple illusion of light and add a bit of contrast to the piece. If you want I can show you an example in photoshop of what I’m talking about. Looking good!"

It was my first time in thickening lines with watercolour paint, and I really liked this technique as it brought depth to the illustration so that it doesn't look so flat. My only problem now is that I feel the illustration doesn't connect with Jonny Pain, and that it isn't dark and gloomy enough. 

I wanted to try something completely different to my previous ideas, and this time drew a person who is being pulled down by tendrils. I wasn't sure where I was going with this and felt that my ability to draw from the side wasn't as strong as my previous sketches. I then abandoned this idea. 

I was still quite interested in using a person as the main subject, so this time I drew something that seemed to be broken so that it contradicted with the title of the album. I drew a fallen angel as I have seen gothic women portrayed in metal band covers... Although when I looked back at the lyrics I realised that it didn't really relate to it. It was nice to experiment with the side profile though and I felt that I did much better than my first attempt.

This was the development of my previous & one of my first designs after I realised that I needed to take a look at references. When I searched for forest lines I saw a lot of photographs of mountains, and after seeing what Intohimo had done with their album cover I thought that drawing mountains would not only add depth to the piece but would also mean that the trees would stand out a lot more. I am thinking of doing this in biro, with my hand never leaving the page to create that grungy appearance that is shown in Charles Keeper's illustrations. 

I experimented once again with watercolour paint, but this time with only black as I wanted the experiment to fit in with the theme of the album cover. I have to say that this one wasn't as good as my first experiment because of the lack of colour, and when I tried to imitate smooth, flowing lines for branches it didn't look so good. It just looked like some wiggly strands going astray! 

This was a little idea developed, once again, by my first illustration. The lyrics to Unbroken portrayed how lonely he was without his loved one, so I drew it so that the trees represented people. The main character is on one side of the world, while everyone else was on the other. The only thing was that I can't really draw circles very well, so if I do use this as my final I would need to take into account that it might be classed as too cartoony. However I could easily place the type in the centre. 

Conclusion: I think that the strongest illustration of all of these would be the mountains and forest, with the moon hanging over them in the background. This is because I have combined elements from each of my inspirations (Metallica for the thin lines encircling the moon, and the biro idea from Charles Keeping) and the idea of using a forest that Jonny Pain had mentioned in our first meeting. I would now need to develop this idea and also figure out what to do with the CD Label. 

Logo Design

In our first meeting Jonny Pain mentioned having only "JP" in their logo, although I went along and designed the whole name as I would like it to be in the same style as the logo. 

I first started by going along the route of grunge, taking a look at my mood board every now and then. I experimented with different ideas and styles. 

At this point I seem to go down the route of having "JP" situated inside a circle, so I went and developed this idea. I still let my mind wander a bit though because I wasn't too sure about this circle idea, hence why I experimented with different "calligraphic" styles. 

Conclusion: I really like the idea of using JP within a circle, as I have seen some of similar designs in my research and they worked really well. I shall need to develop this idea in Illustrator.