From James on his newest poster.
Without a doubt, my newest most favoritest local band is Floating Action. they have a brand new self-titled record out on Dr. Dog's label, Park The Van Records. i was pretty stoked to be asked to create a poster for the Record Release Show here in Asheville.
original sketch
i did a bunch of sketches and came up with an idea i thought would work, so i did a couple of illustrations for it and scanned them in and as i started to put it all together i realized it just wasn't cool enough. so i scrapped the idea and started fresh. i developed the above sketch in photoshop, to get an idea of the colors and how they would work. i was limited to two colors, and so i utilized an overlap of the two main colors to create a third color.
i also wanted this to have a definite concept: the band is from an area here called Black Mountain, which is obviously up on a big mountain. i combined that with the fact that traditionally, fresh and new jazz musicians are referred to as "young lions". hence, the mountain lion character. and of course, the fact that he's diving to reach the newly released record is, literally, 'floating action'.
above are the two main pieces i needed to illustrate, and it was just easier to draw them separately, so i can place them and re-size them in photoshop later on, and change it to my heart's content. as is uaually the case, i was constantly trying to capture the looseness, flow and action of the sketch, but incorporate more detail and realism - and allow them all to live harmoniously.
detail shot
the last part i needed to draw was the lettering, which is all hand done. i scanned that in and spent awhile composing the scene and coloring it in. a special touch is the subtle 'smoky' wash around the bubbles to give the effect of refracted light under the water.
2-color screenprint, 13"x20", edition of 130
once again, this was printed by Nick at The Half and Half, and as usual it looks amazing. we went with an edition of 130, and they're 13"x20". they're available for $15 on gigposters.com - i don't have many of these to sell, so get them before it sells out. and do check out this album, it really is pretty incredible. my favorite song is "Marie Claire".
