ALBUM ARTWORK: the making of BLACK SWIFT: The World Howls
I thought I'd share the process of working on the album artwork for my latest release "The World Howls" with my band. The title comes from a song called "The World Howls." The song has to do with a neighbor's dog who was constantly next door howling and who came to symbolize the suffering I saw in India. I wanted the cover to visually have a connection with this song. I had already made many collages to visually represent this song, and had experimented a little with those (see left), but it wasn't quite there. I thought, maybe I could merge my face with a dogs face to have some howling. So, I printed out some copies of my big mouth, and brought it down to my studio and starting playing around with the collage and text.
It's funny how sometimes, those art coincides happen. I had many images already cut out on my table, and the flowers just seemed to work perfectly. Then the tulip tongue happened- and it was all very exciting! It's the moments within art that one hopes and dreams for- the moments when through work and perserverance things come together. I sent the sketches to my guitarist/incredible designer (about to launch his own design business) David Arzt. He gave me some tips, and I went on to create a full head of flowers.
In the end the finished collage looked like this:
The framed original artwork is also for sale HERE:
After the cover was done, I moved onto the full CD Booklet design. Since I had begun a couple years before making collages that visually represented my songs, I had a lot of material to work with- and wanted the end product to be something between a mix of an art catalog, and a CD. So the designing began. I chose from my collages and had an image to visually represent each song. I'm going to be completely honest with you: I'm super proud of how this turned out- and not just the artwork, the songs sound GREAT! You can order it HERE
