Assignment 3: Make a POSTER for a music event

Brief: Design an illustration for a poster for a music event. An Early Music concert, a Jazz evening or for a pop group.

I chose to do a poster for the Band (pop group) 'Of Monsters and Men.'

Video of: "Of Monsters and Men: King and Lionheart"

I really enjoyed this assignment...although I think I may have gone a little 'off piste'. 

I tried to ensure that on this assignment I was not going to overwork my final piece. In order to do this I decided to try doing completely different versions so that I didn't allow myself time to overwork one version and therefore I tried to maintain a degree of spontaneity.  

I started by researching a brief history of the poster and became aware of the wonderful work of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec who is attributed by many as the founder of the modern poster. 

His posters are lithographs and are full of energy and movement. I love the way that he composes his images and his use of flat block colour.

I then looked at posters and gig posters to get an idea of what was effective:

             

 

Local gig in Brighton

Local gig in Brighton

After this I researched the band Of Monsters and Men a little more thoroughly and found out that they are in fact from Iceland and won a competition in Iceland which enabled them to be able to create an album which then became an international success! 

I have always enjoyed their music and noted the folk, story-like nature that is central to their music.  Having researched a little bit about Iceland, I can now recognise the influence that their cultural heritage has on their music and therefore I decided to include a few of these references into the final posters. I made a mood board in my learning log..which I will download after it has been reviewed by my tutor....and included ideas about the band itself, Iceland, the mythical creatures that their songs mention and of course monsters! 

I really like their current logo and when I went on their website I found they echo it a lot in their official merchandise, so I decided to do the same. 

A few pics regarding Iceland: 

 

 

 

 


I then looked for images that related to their lyrics as well as brainstorming different ideas about the logo itself:

Flying ship, mentioned in song

Most of their songs mention forests/trees

Their Logo reminded me of circuit board connections

Simply a great image of very different view of a circuit board

I also thought that their logo could be packman characters

and the Monsters and crazy looking animals!!!

Maurice Sendak,Where the wild things are.

  

This is a RABBIT!!

                                                                     

I did a few rough drawings (Which I will scan in at a later date because I've sent them off) and then launched into doing 5 different versions.Most of the versions I have done are portrait in composition purely because 90% of the gig posters I looked at were structured this way. I did one version landscape because I figured it couldn't be against the rules.....well hopefully not! 

Version1: Northern lights

Final Northern lights

Preparatory stage

 I did this using gouache on watercolour paper and cut out the O,M's and A in tissue paper. I used Indian ink and a brush pen to do the writing.
...pity I spelt Brighton without the H!! Ohh mannnn! It was too late to correct and a valuable lesson was learnt: if I am going to hand write the lettering..I need to have full active concentration! Alternatively I should have perhaps written it on another layer e.g.: on tracing paper or of course scanned both sections in and tried to adjust digitally therefore allowing for mistakes to be corrected.
Also I did the sky using gouache which has a Matt effect and I feel that perhaps using watercolours may have provided a more translucent effect for the sky.....it may not have but perhaps worth a try if time had allowed!

Version 2: Stars

Photograph of version 1 of the stars

Scanned copy of version 2 stars

 

Photograph of version 2 of the stars

For this version I painted an A3 piece of drawing paper with black quink. Once this was dry I used a twice to apply bleach to the surface and draw on the design. 

After completing the first version I felt the text was too small for a poster and therefore did a second (very similar) version with larger text.  My Husband commented that he didn't mind the smaller text and felt that it appeared that it was emerging through the black which is also a nice thought. For me I still feel as a poster providing information, the larger text does this element better. What I did find though was this poster photographed better then it scanned which was interesting. 

This version was the quickest to create which is probably part of the reason I really enjoyed creating it! I also enjoy allowing the material to play a role in how the finished image turns out as the bleach doesn't always react uniformly. 

Version 3: Ship

Final Collage Ship version

For this version I drew inspiration from the British collage and mixed media artist, Mark Herald: 

I love the textures that he creates, his combination of printmaking processes and mixed media and his joyous use of nature as most of his primary subject matter.

This was by far my most time consuming version which entailed a lot of working into the poster and changing things around as I went along.

I played around with a variety of compositions especially whether to include the fish as I had planned initially in my rough sketch. I found that putting together the appropriate colours was very challenging in this piece, especially when it came to the text. In the end I created a predominantly diagonal composition to create a sense  of movement as well as to draw the eye to some of the information. In so saying that the yellow text re: the venue is very much horizontal to contrast the predominantly diagonal composition.
I enjoyed working in mixed media i.e.: gouache, tissue paper, ink, white paper and cut outs and I enjoyed the textures that were created between the tissue paper and paint and using a tooth brush to apply the paint for the sea as well.
I am not sure that it works the best as a poster per say though and I think it is because perhaps the colours are competing a little bit more then they should which confuses the viewer a little bit regarding where the focus of the image is. I'm not sure really...perhaps I have looked it toooooo many times!

Pencil start and 1st layer of sea paint

Sea with tissue paper and planning text

To fish or not to fish?

Trialling all cut out text on poster before sticking down with glue

               
 My original idea was to try and lino print the text onto the poster but because it taken SO long, I was running out of time and didn't want to make a mistake that would be irreparable...I decided to rather cut-out my hand-written lettering.

Version 4: Forest

This version was also one of the quickest to create for me....which always makes me partial to it! ; )

Final Forest version

Preparation step revealing masking fluid                                    

Mobile phone photograph edited on phone using Picsart app: High Definition

As demonstrated slightly above, I started off with a pencil sketch on drawing paper; I used masking fluid to protect the areas I knew I wanted white or in colour. I then painted the trees using black quink. I then painted in the colours using gouache relatively roughly and then after removing the dried masking fluid, I touched up the coloured area and some of the inked areas. 

I make the mistake of using quite a thin drawing paper which was a little too thin for these wet media and so the buckling of the paper is evident even in the scan. This is better when edited in the pics art programme on my phone so it may have been worthwhile using an image editing programme like pixelmator to tray and achieve this type of effect on the scanned original.

On the whole I enjoyed creating it. I didn't really plan where each colour should be but rather did this as I went along.  I think it is quite effective as a poster because the contrast of the bright colours against the black silhouette of the trees is eye catching. It has a stained glass window effect which was unintentional. I'm not sure if the silhouettes of the trees completely come across as well.

My final version: MONSTER version!

I decided to Lin cut this version and decided to go crazy and do it in a landscape composition.

Final Black and white monster A3 lino print

Final colour version of A3 Monsters- lino print and gouache

Wow! Did I make ALOT of silly but costly mistakes when it came to this poster! I was adamant to have at least one of poster versions done in a printmaking method and the chosen method was to make a lino cut. Unfortunately on my first cutting attempt I realised that the letters had to be a mirror image but didn't translate this into the words as well....this version below is a result of this mistake: 

Print of backwards words

I was determined to try fix this so I cut out the incorrect lino section and creating a kind of puzzle piece with the mirrored words and letters in the correct order! 

Corrected lino with new "puzzle piece of letters and words"

Unfortunately my mistakes did not end there. In my second round of printing I realised I had left out the "n" in Monsters and therefore the print read " Of MOSTERS And Men!!!!!!!" In order to prevent going to crazy with cutting even more lino, I decided to simply cut the "O" out of Mosters so that I could create a space for 2 letters using an ink pen, which I did and so the O and N are written and not printed!

I also had trouble sourcing an A3 piece of Lino and so had to work with 2xA4 sheets of lino. This meant that I had to stick the 2 pieces of lino together. Unfortunately I didn't do this flawlessly so in the prints it is a little evident where I have stuck them together. I think I need more practise in this....or I just have to make a plan to source an A3 piece of Lino!

Again I enjoyed the lino cutting process but certainly found it time consuming. ....especially because of my mistakes! 

On asking my sister and my husband for their opinions on the 2 posters they felt worked the best, they differed from each other and from me! My sister chose the Northern lights version and the ship. My husband chose the Forest and the monsters and I felt that the forest and the star version worked best as posters! So I decided in the end not to choose...which I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do.... but rather await the feedback from my tutor! (uh oh!)