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Myths and Urban Legends
Urban Tapestry

CCD Cover for Myths and Urban Legends

A fun cover to design and paint, though this is an example of how lots of things can go awry after the painting leaves your hands. I had originally designed the painting to be cropped two ways, for either a horizontal tape cover or a CD cover. It ended up with the purple border around it instead, which admittedly made things easier on the printer, but looks clumsy to me. Also an example of how blues and purples tend to shift unpredictably in reproduction. The scan on the left is of the final cover, and it's much redder than the scan of a photo of the actual painting shown on the right. All that said, though, it does clearly remind me of what practices are like for Urban Tapestry, and that makes a special painting for me.

Pencil Sketches, value and color roughs are all below so you can see the working process in action.
The two tight pencil versions I drew up for Urban Tapestry to choose from. We ended up combining elements from both; the book fairy appears in the final painting, as well as the hedgehog, the frog prince and of course Arnie, Allison and John's cat.
Very rough thumbnails to start getting ideas for composition. Lots more of these were done before going to the tight pencils.
Light/dark value studies done to decide how the lighting worked, what the points of highest contrast were, etc. I needed to get Urban Tapestry's approval on the painting,so I did more roughs than I probably ordinarily would to give them a better idea of what they could expect in a final painting.
Color roughs done to decide details; we had already discussed an overall color scheme. All the roughs (except thumbnails) were sent to Urban Tapestry so they could have close input on the final painting.
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