Salvador Dali Development

I started off drawing Salvador Dali by looking at photos and old videos that he was in. I liked that he always seemed to be pulling funny faces on most of the photos that I found of him. I wanted to capture these poses in the drawing that I did of him. I started off with a few sketches, as soon as I decided what I wanted the drawing to look like I took it into photoshop and completed it digitally.  

Initial sketches 

When I was happy with my initial sketches I scanned in the drawing that i wanted to used and cleaned it up in photoshop. I changed the levels to make the whites white rather than cream and the blacks more black.

I then started to build up layers of colour until I was happy. I started off with a solid base colour for the skin tone. 

 I then added shading to the cheeks and coloured the eyes and lips.

I then proceeded to colour in the hair and clothing I stuck with darkish grey colours as I feel this worked as a nice masculine  colour scheme.

 To complement the dark green eyes and add a pop of colour I coloured the tie in burgundy. I think this worked out quite well with the rest of the image. I then decided that the image looked a bit strange and realised it was because there was no shading on the neck so I coloured it a bit darker than the face colour. I think that this worked out well and finished off the image nicely.

Initial thumbnail sketches

here are sketches of the initial ideas that I had for the album covers they are only thumbnail very rough sketches at the moment to help me decide witch idea I like best.

These sketches are for a concept that I had based on a scandinavian folk tale about a man that buys a cat. I decided to try out  drawing some cats curled up asleep because I love the shape that they make when they're all snuggled up. After drawing the thumbnails I decided that I did like the idea but I feel like it doesn't go that well with the sound and atmosphere that the album has.

Cat sketches 

The next concept that I had was based of the folk tale of the hill people that lived under the hills because they are scared of loud noises. I decided not to go through with this concept because it was very similar to something I had previously seen (read more about that here) and I couldn't figure out a composition that I liked. 

Hill people rough sketches

The final concept idea that I have is based off a Folk tale called Huldra about a woman who gets given a cow tale and she has to hide it from normal people. (Read the folk tale here) The moment I read this story I really liked it and it made me think of a woman that lives in an enchanted forrest. When I listen to Agnes Obels music it makes me think of a beautiful forest with an undertone of darkness. I think this idea would work really well for the album concept. Here is a very rough sketch of the idea I have, sorry for the bad photo ill upload a better one the next time I have that sketchbook on me. 

Huldra rough sketch