Metal band In Waves comissioned the cover of their first album to me, the concept we discussed included a golden spiral carved in stone, with a red accent somehow placed in a random segment of the spiral.
▲ I sketched the spiral and decided to place the accent not randomly but somehow in a geometrically justified place. The placing should still be loose enough to allow a bit of the randomness of a hand-made process to have taken place.
▲ I sketched the square album cover, placing the golden spiral on the top of the square, allowing space for the name of the band and the title of the album below. Notice at this point I decided the accent would be blood (or at least a liquid thingy) that dripped into the carving.
▲ I didn't make the spiral fit perfectly into the actual square for pure aesthetic reasons, I needed some extra room to "carve" it, plus the final result should look as if it was made without any measurement tools. I used Illustrator to trace the guides and the spiral, I applied a standard Illustrator brush on the spiral itself to have a rough guide of an irregular line, and then placed it altogether in Photoshop.
▲ I loosely drew a rough guide by hand to simulate someone actually using graphite or chalk on the stone before starting the carving process. Regarding my 'carving' technique, if you know how to use Photoshop you probably know this is an easy thing to do so I won't explain it here. I'll just say I retouched all the edges by hand using a layer mask to get rid of the rigid algorithmic embossed effect.
▲ I added the blood as two or three more layers, aplying a little shadow and tone changes by hand here and there, and added the name and title also loosely placed but following my inital sketch. Finally, added a contrast layer mask to brighten some areas.
▲ I presented the album like this (the actual disc is just tentative as it might only be released in digital), using a beautiful and very useful mock from Cris at Pixeden.com
Original concept & sketching (not included here): Elisa Negrete
Design: Me
Original CD cover mock here
