SFTBW Alumni Album Covers

Back in 2014 I produced a rock opera reinterpretation of my graphic novel Basewood, called Songs From the Basewood.  My amazingly talented friend Andy Hentz did 99% of the work, including singing the part of the main character, Ben. I co-wrote some of the songs and got to sing the part of the wolf-dragon, which was a ton of fun. For the other three parts, we contacted some of our very talented musician friends who we met in college. My friend Lindsay Sharp sang the parts of Violet and Caren, Ben Montgomery sang the part of Argus and played all of the trumpet parts, and Sudara Williams sang the part of the dog, contributed some beautiful guitar parts and also mixed and mastered the entire album.

Making Songs From the Basewood was one of the most incredible creative experiences of my life, and I'm so proud of what our team created.  Sometimes I feel like I actually like the album more than the book! Anyways, this is all to say that I've stayed in touch with all these incredibly talented musicians and have recently had the opportunity to create some cover art for their recent albums!

Wurlibird Special by Sudara Williams

Sudara performed this entire instrumental album on a Wurlitzer organ and he had a really clear vision of what he wanted for this cover image.  It was just a matter of trying to deliver what he was envisioning in his mind.  A couple of sketches, a few value tweaks and we let this cover take flight!

Free As a Hotel by Ben Montgomery

The story of this album is a long one, so without going into its whole history, I'll just say that I got very slightly involved with it in a motivational capacity in the 11th hour.  I think because of my minuscule role in bringing about its completion, Ben and Sudara (who mixed and mastered the album) asked me to make the cover art. All of the songs were written in Ben's apartment, at his piano, and luckily for me, he lives just down the road here in Santa Fe. I swung by and took some photos and then worked up some sketches to send to Sudara who art directed this piece.

Originally he asked for a "messy" treatment (maybe with charcoal?) and even as the idea developed further, that sort of got stuck it my head.  I took a first crack at the approved sketch using cold press watercolor paper, ink wash and a soft blackwing pencil. 

This image felt too dark for these tunes, so before abandoning it completely, I messed around with the grayscale image in Photoshop, using the "duotone" process, which essentially replaces the white and black ends of a grayscale spectrum with two other colors. It was really fun to experiment with different color combinations. This lightened up the image, but it still didn't feel quite right.  I may come back to this technique again for some future project!

In the end, Sudara asked for a more "Alec" style of rendering, in full color, for the finished piece :)

As you can see, I implemented some of the textured photoshop brushes that I learned how to use on Be Prepared.

Both of these albums are really great, so I hope you'll follow the links above to stream them for free, or consider buying them on the platform of your choice!

Harry and the Potters Album Cover

One of my illustration assignments at Pratt was to draw an imaginary album cover for a band.  I chose Harry and the Potters, because I had just found out about them a year or two before and was kind of obsessed with them at the time.  I sent this image to Harry and the Potters, and although it was never used for an album cover, they have used it a few times on flyers or things like that.

I am posting this old work to get it back online after I stopped using Flickr to display my illustration work.

Ramen Music #8 Cover

Ramen Music issue #8 came out last week, and once again it has one of my illustrations on the cover.  You can listen to the entire issue for free, by following this link.  As usual, it is chock-full of all sorts of interesting new music, all wrapped up in a beautifully designed, interactive package.

For this image, I used an old idea that has been haunting my sketchbooks for years.  Originally the concept was to have a spiral of three-dimensional lettering floating above a birds-eye view of some sort of scene.  When I started sketching ideas for these Ramen Music covers, it occurred to me that I could have the piano keyboard spiral down, instead of lettering.  By extending the spiral endlessly, I'm hoping this image will hint at the infinite possibilities presented by the keys of a piano.

I still have one more Ramen Music cover which has not been used yet, so we'll see when they choose to break it out... hopefully some time in 2012!

Ramen Music #5 Cover

Oh man, I'm so glad that I didn't just post all of the covers I did for Ramen Music last year when I drew them.  Instead, I get to re-plug this awesome project every time they use one of my covers!  This month being just such an occasion.  For the cover of Issue #5, I had my Nogard the Dragon character (from my upcoming webcomic Isle of Elsi which should start in 2012?) blowing some hot jazz through a trumpet.  I love dragons, and I played trumpet for about 15 years, so this image was a lot of fun to draw.

If you haven't checked out Ramen Music yet, you really should!  By following this link, you can listen to the entire 5th issue FOR FREE.  And you can share that link with as many people as you like!  The idea behind Ramen Music is that they charge a subscription (right now it's $29 for six issues a year) and then they accept submissions from independent musicians and curate an awesome music "magazine" every other month.  It's a great mix of a website, a music player, a zine that has interviews with all the bands, and the whole thing is beautifully designed.  

Then, unlike MOST music business stuff these days (record labels, iTunes, etc.) they split up the lion's share of the incoming money and give it back directly to the artists.  Right now they are paying $150.00 per track to artists, with very fair terms.  

This whole project is the mastermind of my buddy Sudara, who I went to Oberlin with a long time ago, and who is ALSO the mastermind behind alonetone.com, which thousands of people use to post their music and share it with people.  It's a real honor to be involved with such a cool project, and Ramen Music still has a few more of my covers banked, so I'll post the next one when it goes online!

Ramen Music #3 Cover

My friend Sudara's newest creative endeavor Ramen Music is still going strong.  He is currently paying musicians $150 for new tracks, which he groups together into "issues" which are then available for download to paying subscribers.  Anyone can listen to the music for free, streaming online.  The more subscribers he gets, the more he pays for each track.  Needless to say, this is one of the coolest distribution models for music in use today.  No one's getting screwed over, and it is a great chance to hear some original music.

Above and beyond all that, each issue is also beautifully designed.  There is a cover image (I drew the image for issue one, remember?) and then Sudara and his team design a sort of digital music player/interactive liner note webpage which is extremely pleasant to scroll through / read / listen to.  Here is the link for Ramen Music Issue One, if you want to go experience it.

The cover for Ramen Music Issue Two was done by the incredibly talented Lisa Hanawalt, and then the cover for Ramen Music Issue Three (which just came out today!) was done by yours truly.  The theme for this issue was Beats, Drums and Rhythms, so this six-sticked, drumming octopus seemed appropriate:

I really can't recommend this music enough.  You really should go give it a listen!  And if you are a musician, Ramen Music is looking for new tracks for the next issue, so you should send them your stuff!

Organizational Overhaul!

PLEASE NOTE: I no longer use Flickr to display my illustrations.  Please disregard the outdated information in the post below.

Oh man, I just spent the last two days going through this ENTIRE BLOG and the illustration section of my Flickr account, to get the two to sync up!  Before when you clicked on an image in this blog, it would take you to an empty page with just the image, sometimes blown up, sometimes at the same size.  NOW when you click on (almost) any image in the blog, it will take you to the corresponding page for that image in my Flickr account, so you can view it larger, favorite it, share it, etc. etc. etc.  The only images that WON'T do this are process drawings, or sketchbook things or little images that I use for news posts.  Basically there is now a Flickr set for each label on this blog.

Here, I'll show you how it works!  While I was going through my Flickr account, I realized that I never posted these album covers that I drew for the Harry Potter Alliance.  (You can still download this compilation for FREE at www.stopbigmedia.com/potterwatch/ )

The other nice thing about this set-up is that it allows me to post the images a little bit bigger than I was before.  I also changed the design of the actual blog, to accommodate the width (though I know most of you are probably reading this via RSS).

Anyway, I found a few other things in my Flickr that I never posted in here, so I will be posting those soon, along with more gags and some other recent illustration stuff I have been doing.  There's a lot more on the way, so keep checking back!

Ramen Music #1 Cover

Today, my old friend Sudara launched RamenMusic.com which is one of the coolest ideas for a music website ever.  It's going to be kind of like a bi-monthly music anthology and it takes the standard music business model (where the label keeps almost all of the money, and the artist gets very little) and turns it on its head.  You can read a lot more about it on the site, and you should, because Sudara is one of the most brilliant guys I've ever met.  (He's also the mastermind behind aLoneTone.com if you've heard of that).

So when Sudara came to me at the beginning of this year and asked if I would like to do some art for Ramen Music, I LEAPED at the chance.  It met all of my criteria for an illustration DREAM job:

1) I got to work with a close friend, whom I respect and admire.
2) I had complete creative control.  (the only requirement was that the images somehow related to music)
3) The illustration would be used to help a project that I really believed in, and wanted to succeed.

Below is the first cover I drew, which they will be using for the very first "issue" of Ramen Music, which will be out in September.

I did four other covers, which I will post as they are used on the site.  For now, please go check out RamenMusic.com  You can sign up for a subscription, or if you are a musician, you can submit your songs for review.  If they are accepted, you will be paid well for your work!

A Lone Tone Album Covers

When I was a freshman in college, I met this remarkable guy named Mark S. Williams. A few years ago he changed his name to "Sudara" and started the incredible music site A Lone Tone. A Lone Tone makes it super easy for anyone to post their own music online, and to share it with the world. Users can upload their recordings and then create digital albums by grouping the songs.

Well, I used to record a lot of music, and I'm trying to get back into it a bit (for a SUPER TOP SECRET PROJECT which I probably won't really talk about for another year or so). So I decided to set up my own A Lone Tone account as a place to archive my old music and hopefully a place to put up NEW music as it starts happening. A Lone Tone allows you to upload an image, which acts as the album cover, so I decided to quickly whip up some cover images for my two albums "The Curtain Tapes" and "My Adventure Soundtrack." I thought I'd post them here for people to see.

Since both recordings were made at very specific times in my life, I decided to adapt single panels from my minicomic Phase 7, which visually describe what the music is also trying to convey. The Curtain Tapes was recorded in Los Angeles, in my room with three walls and a curtain. And My Adventure Soundtrack was recorded while five years of hard work and dreams were crumbling down around me in Sydney, Australia. I chose to depict each of these depressing scenes with just one additional color (besides black) to try and keep it simple.

I'm slowly lining up a few small illustration projects which I will get to as soon as the next issue of Phase 7 drops in early October. So hopefully this blog will see some more action in the last few months of 2009!

2009 Blogging Schedule

One of my goals for this year is to not stress out as much about my work. So with that in mind, I'm going to throw away my old system of posting here once a week (which was stressing me out plenty!) Instead I will post new illustrations or drawing challenges in this blog whenever I can. Sometimes I will post a lot. Other times not so much.

Okay! So here are a few drawings that I made for my girlfriend Rachel over the holidays, posted with her permission! The first is yet another cover image for a mixed CD I made her. (Hedgehogs are one of Rachel's favorite animals)

The other is an image drawn specifically to be used as a desktop image for Rachel's new computer. (Rachel's favorite holiday is Halloween). The chicken is dressed up as my dragon character, the snake is dressed up as Max from Spiral-Bound and the hedgehog is dressed up as Harry Potter (OF COURSE).

Alright, well, I hope you enjoyed these drawings. I'll update again as soon as I can!

Rachel CD cover

Whoops! I wasn't able to find an internet connection this weekend at The Small Press Expo so I am a little late in posting.

This illustration is a cover for a mixed CD of Harry and the Potters songs that I made for Rachel. Back in May, Rachel and I went to see a free HATP show at the main branch of the New York Public Library, which was pretty epic (they had a HORN section!) There were two people dancing around in lion suits (as Patience and Fortitude) and Rachel also screwed up her ankle that night, which is all pictured here. The title is a play on words, spoofing Brad Neely's brilliant Wizard People, Dear Readers. Inside jokes abound!

I've got a few things in the works... so I will definitely have some stuff to post next weekend - on time!