Six Years Later...a Music Festival Poster

Suddenly it is six years since my last post on this blog (I have another blog on 2D animation that I post to continually: 162 posts so far. It is called Acme Punched.) But I am still here and as I have been doing more illustration lately, I don't see why I shouldn't reinvigorate this blog by showing what I have done in that department.

Let's begin with a festival poster...

Classic Moonfest 2018

I was commissioned to do this poster by a friend who puts on this annual weekend festival in Quilcene, Washington. She had seen posters I have done for a private chili party that my wife and I put on every October, and she and her partner were excited to have me do one for their event. They had not done an elaborate poster before, and we had some fun getting together and figuring out what it should depict. Here is the tight pencil sketch.

We had decided that all the "people" would be frogs, based on the fact that they had had a frog on a previous promotion.  Right away I was struck with the idea that the Os in Moonfest could be moons, and that they could be casting twin reflections onto the lake at the top of the night landscape. A few things did change or otherwise evolve, but this drawing is basically what I carried out in color and with the text.

Here is the final.

The finished poster.

Previously for digital illustration I have worked mostly in Photoshop, but this was done mostly in Sketchbook.  Sketchbook has some drawing tools that I like, including an interesting range of brushes. As for text, I believe that Photoshop is king, so I worked back and forth between the two programs, using the tiff format. I did find that Sketchbook could not handle text outlines or strokes and other such things created in Photoshop, so I learned to add any fancy text at the end of the process in Photoshop. My client was pleased and they are looking forward to their event, which is to happen in August.