Who Becomes The Canary Album Cover
Mike Clark reached out to me to commission an album cover for his upcoming album Who Becomes The Canary? The concept record would be eleven songs centering around the destruction of a coal mining town and its subsequent rule by the remaining animals of the town.
For inspiration I looked to Bakshi's Lord of the Rings imagery as well as the animated, heartbreaking film Watership Down. Both provided a muted, '70s color theme that lent itself to both the subject matter and the prog/experimental sound of the songs. Then I set to work, sketching potential thumbnails for Mike to check out. Together we decided on the concept of a faded photograph of the town with the Canary building a nest around it (bottom right).
Making use of my chosen inspiration, I mixed and played with a potential color palette of blue sages, burnt umbers, muted purples and golden yellows. I landed on the blue sage ribbon version, since it beautifully complements both the yellow canary and the sepia tones of the photograph.
For the final album cover, I painted the canary and photograph by hand in watercolor, outlining it with a .5 Micron pen. I brought in a stamped '70s modern text to round out the psychedelic vibe. I added a bit more paper texture to play up the hand-painted aspect, but also to draw some inspiration from tactile records (Neil Young's Harvest Moon being the biggest contributor). Final edits were all done in Photoshop.
You can listen to the record here.
