This week in one of my illustration classes I’ve been working on an album cover illustration. The project is pretty opened which is nice because I could either choose a band or music artist and create and album cover for them or completely start from scratch and make up a band or some artist.
For my album cover I decided to chose Lana del Rey because she is one of my favorite artists and biggest inspirations. Like usual I began sketching out ideas and thumbnails in my sketchbook before I settled on something. Lana’s music is very poetic and can be kind of sad so I definitely wanted to convey that in my design. I ended up deciding to take a couple Lana del Rey symbols and used them to create my album cover. I choose to illustrate a tiger wearing a flower crown and an American flag as a cape. One reason I chose to illustrate a tiger to represent power and strength. I chose a flower crown because in a lot of Lana’s music videos she is seen wearing a flower crown and its become something she’s known by. Lastly, I chose an American flag because Lana loves America and mentions it in some of her songs.
Once I had my thumbnails completed I began drawing my composition on 12″ x 12″ mixed media paper. Then when I was done with my drawing and began painting it with watercolor. To create finer details I decided to go over the top of my painting with colored pencils since they’re easier to control and I also like the mixed media effect. I still have to create some hand lettering and add some more details to the tiger but overall I am very happy with what I have created so far.
