May 7, 2013

Chasing Norman/ Chief Gritts

Folks, I can not apologize enough for the extended absence. So, I will not even try.

For my first post back from the real world, I present to you the cover art for Chasing Norman's first CD, Chief Gritts.  The band had come to me for help with the art on their freshman album. They had seen an image on TV that caught their eye and decided they had to have it on the front of the CD. Other than a screen capture of the image, the best version they could find was the following:


"The advent of the first human baby is celebrated by an admiring congregation of apes,
who are holding a lamp to Darwin's book, "The Descent of Man" (1871)."


As much as they dug the image, the preference was to have a cleaner, drawn version of it, rather than a murky, aged photo of the original. That is where yours truly came into the picture.


I created an inked drawing based on the original picture. It really brought me back to the time I spent as an editorial cartoonist. It was a lot of fun to work on, to be sure.

The trouble with the image is that it is horizontal, while an album cover is square. This meant some clever cropping needed to be done to make an image that fit a square, but remained true to the overall 'feeling' of the original. After scanning the drawing in, I used Photoshop to complete the task (taking the chance to add some shading while I was at it.)


Recently, when I saw my brother, he astutely noted that my ink work showed my familiarity with the work of Gilbert Shelton, creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Judge for yourself, dear readers. I guarantee my style has more than a touch of Fat Freddy in it.


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