Well, I just have to say, being a freelance illustrator – it helps having friends who both encourage and commission me on a regular basis! Especially those in quite popular bands – referring back particularly to the Alestorm commission I got last year which you can read all about here: https://abbiestabby.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/alestorm-gotta-drink-em-all-t-shirt/.
I’ve been asked to do poster work for different bands of all sorts of different genres before, so it’s always fun to see what ideas people have, and try to work with them in order to create some magic. In this instance, a very good mate of mine, Mr. Rich “Stitch” Mason of the immensely popular band “Silent Jack” (https://www.facebook.com/silentjackband), requested some potential poster and album artwork.
The brief which he gave me was simple enough: A nude angel, on a white silk bed, an ambiguous look of sadness / hope on her face and a tear in her eye. After relaying emails back and forth to each other when trying to think of the name of the style he wanted, I suggested a sort of “Pre-Raphaelite” look, and he responded with “Aye! That’s the one!”. Referring to the commonplace images of angels depicted by the Pre-Raphaelite artists, I tried to produce a piece in that direction, but with a bit of a modern twist.
I sent Rich each step of progress – from sketch, to fleshing out, to full colour – so that there were options available to him to offer any criticisms or ask for any changes. Only having a very cheap scanner at hand, which actually washed out most of the quality of the images when I tried scanning them in, I photographed each version and sent it via Facebook.
The colouring materials I used to complete this picture were Derwent artists colour pencils. My brother had actually bought me a set of flesh-tones from this brand which have turned out to be an incredible asset to my utensils. I have created some of my best pieces to date with these pencils.
Once I got the “okay” from Rich, I emailed a higher resolution version of the finished drawing to him. The next step was to wait for he and the rest of the band to fiddle about with it and edit it onto the final poster design. A day later, I got an email with this nifty piece of work attached to it:
Another few days after receiving that, they released the final tour poster which they will be releasing online and around the cities which they will be playing in the next month. A top bunch of lads which were a delight to work with. Earned myself one or two passes to some afterparties after doing this too, which is always nice! Haha!
AbbieSTABBY 