- Sam Johnson Album Cover

I was set a brief to create a professional album cover for a young upcoming solo artist. 

I was given a small brief on what he wanted for his album art, but was also given free range on my artistic license.

• Self portrait of the artist
• Colourful - eye catching 
• Capture the artists personality
• Visually appealing to a Hip-Hop and younger audience 

I first started by drawing a simple and basic outline of the artists self portrait. I then started to add blobs of shading and shapes around the darker parts of his face, using my own artistic license to decide where I would add colour to substitute for the darker shades. Once I had a rough sketch of the artists face I began to add thicker lines and corresponding colours to add shade and tone to my piece. Once I'd added vibrant colours and skin tone I then began adding doodles and small patterns to his hoodie. I made the colours correlate with the artists personality by having random sketches included into the shape of his hoodie, such as a tadpole and a cutlass. Adding vibrant patterns and designs really helped the pieces to be eye catching and original.

Once I had my paper design I scanned it into Adobe Photoshop and started to play with the levels and colour settings such as vibrance, exposure, brightness and contrast. I was then happy with the way my piece was looking so I then decided to start adding extra colour and gradient using tools such as the paintbrush tool and smudge and blur tools. Adding extra detail and colour to my design on Photoshop really helped this piece to life and I feel I have really have used my own artistic license to create a original piece that has ticked every box in the brief.

I hope on working on future projects with this artist including more album arts and music videos that may include my art and animation.