David Bowie LP - Love is Lost - Planning, Sketches and Edits

 After picking out a song title, the next step was to start planning and/or drawing ideas! First of all I had an idea for the song Dancing In The Street, which I did begin drawing a rough idea before I then found the song Love is Lost, which motivated me much more.

These were the paper pages I started out on. Naturally they were only rough sketches and ideas to get me started or to keep notes I could maybe use in later stages.

The eye sketch was an idea for potentially the LP Sticker or as a design for a side of the sleeve. I also knew quite early on that I wanted to have the majority of this piece done digitally, so that I could have any and all images edited to match and also to practice my digital skills. 

I also wanted to include the David Bowie/Thin White Duke puppet in this piece as the majority of the music video featured the puppet. I wasn't really sure how to go about drawing the puppet or how to get a wood grain effect, So when sketching the puppet, I tried a few things. Using simply just coloured pencils didn't look effective/detailed enough, So I then dragged the side of a fine liner lightly over the the paper. I really liked this look and on the paper I have it came out much more grain-y which was just the effect I wanted.

The black background and waistcoat were painted with poster paint and the blue of the eye was a Duck Egg Copic Marker  

I ended up doing the fine liner side strokes for the outcome. I was really happy with how this looked! Although it did take much longer than I thought it would. Any areas that had a darker or thicker line in the wood, I would either had more pressure with the pen or go over the same lines again, while still dragging just the edge of the pen nib over the paper.

After the face was finished, I didn't like how plain the hair looked, So I added a few strokes to make it a bit more realistic. With the drawing done I then scanned it to change the background black to a solid digital black. I was also unsure as to colour it yet or not, so having a digital scanned version without colour was good as a back up just in case, or to even use if I wanted to add the colour digitally. 


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For an example LP sticker, I googled around for Columbia vinyl records for a realistic base. Columbia records are the company that produced the existing Love is Lost LP. When thinking about the design of the sticker, I had an idea for a heart shape to take up the majority of space, drawing it like I did the puppet's face, but in the music video there was no image of a heart so I felt it would be too out of place, seeing as the music video was my main source of inspiration. I ended up going back to my first idea of using an eye, centre of the sticker. 

 Taking this drawing of David Bowie's left eye, I made a few minor edits until I was happy with the overall look of the eye. I still wanted this to look like a simple drawing and to also keep the paper texture in the whites of the eye. The only edits were removing everything around the eye, changing the brightness and then finally a green layer with the effects of glow and fragment. This just helped the green of the eye look much more solid and stronger. 

The placement of the iris over the middle hole of the record is what I want to achieve, the background behind the eye would then be either the same pattern/style as the back of the sleeve or a similar design. 

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Next was the editing of the cover. I had an idea to have a collage style cover, with both the drawing of the puppet and the photograph itself. Firstly I just tried playing around with the layers of opacity and overlaying the images. I really didn't like the idea of them overlapping so plainly, but it was interesting to see and try. Also, I wouldn't chose to have the final outcome like this because personally I think it looks too busy and starts to do your eyes in after awhile. 

This was a creepy after effect of playing around with the magic wand tool, the tolerance was set higher than usual but it still only seemed to effect the right side of the image. Changing the brightness down gave it a really creepy look. It would have been fun to play around with this some more, but overall a creepy vibe isn't what I was going for. 

I also wanted to see what the image might have looked like when inverted, but it wasn't at all what I was looking for. It was a interesting way to see the drawing though, but I just ended up seeing Christopher Walken as the terminator, Which was really bizarre but funny.

 After all the playing around with effects, I thought it would look best to have the drawing simple but bold. I also wanted to keep the drawing black and white, So that the drawing when mixed with the photo would stand out with no distractions. When thinking of different ways of mixing the two together I thought of having a collage/layered effect. So I started creating lines to divide sections of the face. I really liked the look of having one eye being the drawing and the other from the photo, so this simple framed look was kept throughout each idea. The first time I tried this was with the opacity of the drawing turned down to about 170% of 255 (The maximum limit on Paint.NET) 

 After looking through other LP sleeves/CD cover designs, I looked at Muse's first EP. I liked the simplistic style. I didn't start out with the Muse cover in mind, but it must have been unconsciously in the back of my mind as an idea, but when I found it I was quite surprised that I ended up doing something fairly similar.  The way the Muse cover was made was by drummer Dom Howard, photocopying his face. 


Playing around with the opacity of the photograph as well was something I tired. I wondered what it might look like if the photo was much duller than the drawing on top. It did seem interesting and did allow the drawing to stand out more, but on the other hand the photo seemed to hidden in the background, which I didn't like. I then tried to see what the piece would look like if I really did frame the hole eye area on the drawing. I really didn't like this look as it felt too busy and distracting overall. However, one thing I felt was right as adding back in the right cheek with the drawing.


I then brought the colour and opacity of the photo back to normal and full, and was happier with the over all look. I also had decided at this point that using the whole hair section from the photo would look better than the drawn section or halving the hair between the two.  

The other thing I then tried was removing the drawn section of the shirt, I wasn't sure as to if it might look best to have the majority of the face be the drawing and the rest be mostly the photo. I quite liked this idea and edited out the left collar and side of the shirt.

All in all after all the edits and trying things out, I was most happiest with this look. I liked having the separate areas as it gives the drawing more depth and just makes for a much more interesting image and eye-catching image. Next is to piece it all together and make the final layouts/sleeve! 

This is the finished piece that I will use for the final design of the sleeve's front cover.












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The lyrics sheet I want to use in the final piece. I wanted a simple design but I wanted to get it looking like the projections used in the music video of the song. I first started with a layer to make thick black lines for a boarder or frame that I then joined up with thinner black lines. I really liked the look of it with the thinner lines as it made it look more professional and mysterious. Next I made a layer behind the frame with a dark grey brush stroke around the edges that were then edited with a glow effect, fragment effect and finally a crystallize effect. This helped make the whole sheet look much more interesting. Also, with the background design, I can remove the text and use that for the other parts of the sleeve.  


The text was downloaded from Dafont - http://www.dafont.com/rough-typewriter.font

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I then started to make a rough gatefold sleeve, not to scale to see how I will go about making the final version of the sleeve. The gatefold will open up like a book and have the above lyric sheet as the "inside" on the left, with the right holding the vinyl disk. The most professional and effective way to make this would be by printing each section of the sleeve (front, back and 2 inside piece) as a 4 by 4 square, that can then be folded and glued down with tabs to secure the 'front' while allowing the 'back' to be open and house the vinyl. 

I really like the look of gatefold sleeves and can't wait to print everything out and have the final outcome! 

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