This is the third distinctly different poster I’ve done for them for this series. There’s an old saying: “Fast, cheap, and good. Pick two.” This one was supposed to be fast and cheap, but I think it turned out okay. Here are the other two.

A good CD package is not just a collection of art and copy.  It’s an experience — a sequence of events for the person opening it.  I particularly enjoyed working on this dimension of Thomas’s project because we decided to put the lyric insert in a diagonal pocket, allowing the artwork to reveal echoes and surprises as you delve more deeply into the package.  Wishing wells are full of echoes, reflections, and surprises, and so is Thomas’s  music.  So I tried to make the artwork reflect that as well.

I thought it would really work for him to double down on his youth, and so I did a series of doodles for him like kid might do on his notebook.  I used the acoustic and electric guitars as the devil and angel on his shoulder to emphasize his versatility as a singer-songwriter and a rock guitarist.  Willie loved my design, and what’s more, I ran into his Dad later at the video store, and he said that when he’d seen in it posted somewhere, he’d come around to appreciating the way it jumped out from the crowd.  So everyone was happy.  We used the some of the doodle design for a make-over to his website as well.

I did this project as part of my Posters for Haiti campaign, so I donated my entire fee to Partners in Health towards their efforts to bring free medical care to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake.

We took some photos of him posing with a beach ball as a stand in for a helmet, and then I used one for the model of an illustration.  The landscape was inspired by old SF magazine covers and the antique radio Art Deco stylings of the Union Terminal train station in Cinncinnati.

My only request is that it be something evocative of the darker side of the Appalachians — the hollers instead of the highways…  If there can be an urban influence as well, even better…

He also mentioned something about a surreal take on an eight-point buck, and it kind of took off from there.  It’s inspired by an old WPA Depression Era poster for the Department of the Interior from the 1930′s, originally attributed to John Wagner.

I borrowed some bits and pieces of that poster. I also used two wonderful fonts (Submarine vs. Whale and Greensboro) designed by Lyle Zapato, also based on WPA posters.

I donated my entire fee for this poster to Partners in Health as part of my Posters for Haiti fundraising campaign to raise money for medical care for victims of the 2010 earthquake.

I’m glad we did because this is a much more interesting CD cover than the one I started.  The trick was to keep the earthy tones of the music’s country roots, but also to pick up on the themes of innocence, femininity, and teenage romance in the songs, particularly in the album’s title, which comes from a line in the lyrics of “I’ve Got a Secret.”

Like the flower to the bee,
honey, lean on into me…
I’ve got a secret.
Let me let you in on it.

So I went for a very simple pencil sketch painted very loosely and casually in digital media. Carleigh and I also did a couple of photo shoots and we used one of the headshots for the disk’s interior.

I wish I could claim to have shot the portrait we used for the back cover, but that honor belongs to her Dad. (Good job, Dad.)

The figures are all objects from around my house. The sky is an authentic Charlottesville summer sky from a photo shoot Lance Brenner did with me and Stevie Jay for another show, down by the Chandler’s ice cream stand near Pantops.
The Objects
The porcelain peahen (Devon Sproule) was a gift to baby Shannie (my daughter) from her Granny Susan who collects antique tchotchkes.

Also from Granny Susan, the Balinese folk-art cat (Jan Smith), in honor of Shannie’s hopelessly unrequited love of cats when she was a year old.

The Old Testament action-figure (Danny Schmidt), a gift to Shannie from her Auntie Eliza, who owned them as a child herself. No one knows which Biblical figure he’s meant to be. Either Moses or Race Bannon, I’m guessing.

Sgt. Floyd Pepper, bass guitarist for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, (Paul Curreri), we bought at a yard sale as part of a set of Muppet collectibles, minus (sadly) Animal.

The rubber duck cowboy (me) came in a birthday party goodie bag.  He’s a lawduck, as evidenced the star on his vest (not pictured).

Laughing Buddha (Jeff Romano), a gift to Wendy from me, from way back before we were married, bought in a giftshop in Asheville, NC, just because I always liked this story of the Laughing Buddha.

Budai, the Laughing Buddha is said to travel with a large sack on his back like Santa Claus giving candy to poor children. One day a monk walks up to him and asks, “Buddha, what is the meaning of Zen?” The Buddha stops walking. His face goes blank, and he drops his sack and says nothing. “But Buddha, how does one realize Zen?” the monks asks. And Budai smiles, picks up his sack, and without saying a word continues on his way. –adapted from Wikipedia

I wanted to make a CD package for them that would not only get that spirit across, but also help their recording stand apart from the pack with a certain visual oomph.  They came to me with a set of photographs including one close-up shot of their two instruments crossed, Elizabeth’s flute against the scroll of Andrew’s cello.  I liked the simple abstract quality of that shot — especially the way it captured the essence of their music — two very different voices in concert. But by itself, it felt a little static and posed to me, so I suggested that I use it for the basis of a custom illustration.

I went for a woodcut look, which helps to give the feeling of something old and hand-made, but it also gave me the freedom to use colors more dramatically.  I spotted some lovely colors hiding in the reflections in Elizabeth’s flute, and from them I pulled together a palette with four strong rich colors to suggest the mix of styles, like flavors of gelato, or the diamonds in a harlequin’s suit.  The intensity of the color helps to set the record apart from the more staid and conservative packages you often see for classical acts.  The variety of colors also reflect the variety in their music.  And, as a practical matter, the colors also allowed me to “explain” visually their slightly complicated track listings and liner notes — that is, I could indicate which tracks all belonged to the same composer or were part of a set by grouping them in the same panel of color.

Then I turned the cover image upside down because it gave the composition even more gravity-defying energy, and I liked the way the shape suggested an ornate letter T for Terra Voce.