Vagabond Opera's "Sing For Your Lives!"

I've been slaving away at a really fun and challenging project.  I've been commissioned by the "European Cabaret! Vintage Americana! Balkan Belly Dance! Neo-Classical Opera! Old World Yiddish Theater!" band Vagabond Opera to create the cover for their newest album.  Not only do I love their music, my sister Ashia Grzesik sings and plays cello for them.  (You might remember her from this.)  Ashia and I have been collaborating on the album art together over the last couple of weeks.  I'm executing the album cover based on her basic ideas, while she's creating the rest of the artwork for the packaging using my album cover elements.  She will likely be sending me a bill for all of the picture texts I've been sending her!  


First up was the post-apocalyptic background...


Starting to rearrange the burnt-up, bombed-out urban landscape and mounting it to a large canvas.  It reminded me of looking at pictures of Dresden after WWII.

Painting in the bleak gray backdrop sky with clouds that invoke stage curtains...

Just kidding!  That was version one.  It was decided that the background needed to be darker, meaner...

Take 2: I repainted the sky, adding more texture and smoke.  The curtains, rather than being drawn in with charcoal, were painted with varying shades of gray and have the appearance of being tattered. 


With the background pretty much done, work moved on to the foreground.  I promise it won't be as depressing ;) ...

                                            


The plan was to have a vintage hot-air ballon, spreading its propaganda over the doomed city.

Gold paint!  

The balloon itself was probably about ten layers of paint and charcoal to create dimension.

A couple reincarnations of the mouth and album title.  We settled on a vintage travel advertisement meets pulp comic font (bottom).  All done by hand...

...Placing the mustache and title-mouth (titlouth? moutle?).

The fully-assembled balloon!  All painted and cut out by hand.  The most fun (read: almost frustrating) part was glueing the tiny strips of gold paper that are the ropes.  Whew!  I'm really thrilled with the way it turned out. 

Next up: The final assemblage of the full album cover.  Stay tuned...