An exciting new subscription company – Stylus Vinyl commissioned me to create an illustration for their second month’s release. They specialise in pairing wines with music and each month they put together a wine which has been paired with a classic album on vinyl as well as tasting notes and an original piece of artwork inspired by the wine and album.
For my classic album, I was given the Rolling Stones’ classic: Sticky Fingers. Ive always been a fan of the Stones and went about listening to the album over and over again. The illustration was created to reflect how dark I find the lyrics and subject matter. The album also marked a big transition within the band, after the death of their founding member Brian Jones, which I wanted to show in my interpretation.
First Idea/Draft
After a “tough” few hours listening to Sticky Fingers and drinking red wine, I started sketching ideas on my iPad, using the Procreate app. As the illustration was being printed at 304 x 304mm, I then moved to Adobe Illustrator to develop the illustration further in a vector format, which is much better suited to print.
While I was happy with the way the first draft was looking (shown in the animation), I wanted to continue exploring colour palettes and compositions. I felt there was too much repetition in the artwork, which didn’t really suit such a varied sound on the album, which contains elements of Blues, RnB and Country music.
Colour Palettes & Composition
After developing the illustration, I was happy with the composition of the piece… I then wanted to try different colour palettes, as shown below, to see what would work best in print.
Final Design
