Born Anchors CD cover

I worked on a CD cover for Born Anchors. It never really made it to completion, so this is it's last manifestation. The colors, concept, and type are not mine. This is kind of a sad job for me. I like the guys in the band, and the music, and I wish that the concept they wanted had worked out, but it didn't. I was not creatively active on this assignment, my role was more of "the hand." I just drew whatever the guy I was working with wanted and didn't really participate in the concept or anything. The comics style portraits I did on my own at one time in the process, they might become buttons. I like them a lot, even though they're certainly a departure for me. I've been playing around with a lot of different styles lately, and the projects that I've been conceptualizing have been all over the map. This was when I was thinking a lot about developing a comic book style. I'll be the first to admit a strong influence from Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl, Gorillaz). Fun though. But yeah, the cover, not so much. I'm not sure where it went wrong, but it surely did.

Last record cover?

This is a record cover for a Mexican hardcore band called Maladie It's got an Egyptian Death theme. Mummy, blue lotus, stars of the underworld. Good times. I got to do whatever I wanted on this one, and that's the way I like it. They did some of their own changes after passing it off, but I'm showing it the way I intended it to look. This is probably going to be my last record cover, at least for a while. I've finally finished all the covers I had committed to doing, and I don't want to do them anymore. They are labor intensive, and I don't get paid hardly anything to do them. If I got a decent offer to do one for a large label or something, that's a different story, but for what I'm making now it's just not worth the time and stress. I'm supposed to work on some drawings to go in the layout of a record cover, but that's a bit of a different beast.

I'm not sure where my next move will be. I have some editorial illustrations coming up, but if you haven't noticed, illustrations in magazines are waaayyy down. I don't think it's realistic to try to squeeze a living out of those alone. Possibly comics, or concept art. Maybe I'll hunker down in a master's program until the economic shit storm blows over. We'll see.

Nylon Guys - Richard Branson

The art director from Nylon Guys gave me a second chance to do a nice portrait, something that was so challenging to me with the Wonkavision assignment. This time I had a week instead of a day, and the assignment was Richard Branson! A gift from the illustration gods! Portraits can be tough, but the face makes a huge difference. Richard Branson has a truly great face. It's very easy to do a likeness of him. I did many many drawings and studies of his face. At my first attempts were poor and uninspired so I chose not to show them here. The first painting was the really polished and colorful one at the bottom. I was really proud of it, and excited because for the first time I had done a painting that was un-creepy. I personal mile-stone. The AD was not stoked on it though, and said it was too slick. He recommended that I not try so hard, and make something darker. I guess it's better to try too hard than not hard enough. At first I was taken aback, but I quickly realized that it was not suitable for that magazine, and it was not like the work in my portfolio, so probably an unwelcome surprise for the art director. He recommended that I do something less literal, so I have the blue and green shapes based on his directions. I think they came out nice, and it was a good assignment. The blue version is printed on the last page of the magazine, on news-stands now.

Record tracking

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/opfer/_album_art__jeremy_forson
This site came up in my analytics. It kind of blows me away that the record covers I've done have been chronologically tracked, all without me knowing. There's a few things missing, but it's still pretty impressive. Especially because I don't even remember when I put some of these things out, and some of them were never even on my site.

Reebok Shirts

One of my old co-workers referred his friend at Reebok to me, and I got a little job out of it. Good times. They wanted something minimal, yet edgy enough to sell at a street-wear store. I feel like a did a good job of it. It was strange for me to be asked to do a straight up design job, no illustration required, but I was happy to take on a new challenge. I did the parts by hand, printing out a Reebok logo, cutting it out, and spray painting it. I think what makes me different from other designers, is that I took the time to do it by hand, while others might fake it. It makes a big difference visually in my opinion. I'm glad to be able to add such a notable client to my list as well.

Gallery Show, November 7th

Hello Friends,

Wow am I busy! On top of everything else, I'm having my first legitimate solo art show! I'm very excited about it. If you have the ability to come and show your wonderful face, I suggest you do so. It's part of Oakland Art Murmur. I'm hoping to have a good turnout. I bought a fancy Epson printer the day before losing my job, and I'm going to try to make the best of it by making some limited edition prints of some of my most loved paintings. They will be available at the gallery, assuming I don't run into complications. After that I'll have them available on the new website I have to make...it's on the list...which is very long right now.

Jeremy

Blues: Heavy Sci-Fi

As I'm sitting here writing this, I've suddenly started remembering all of the events that have occurred in the course of this project. It is epic. I painted the Space Corpse piece intending for it to be the cover, but the band was not so into it, they wanted something more epic, but just then there was some debate about whether I would be doing this cover at all. They were talking with Ferret Records about putting the album out, and they have an in-house illustrator who does their covers, so they weren't sure if the label would help to pay me. Then there was a huge fiasco with the Poison the Well (PTW) tour poster. PTW is signed with Ferret, and Blues saw my post and asked The Label owner about it and.....it was a rough couple days I don't really want to get into, but it was nasty. The guy from Ferret was nice though, and PTW had nothing to do with it, but their manager was considerate too. Anyway, then Blues decided that Ferret was not a good fit for them, and I was back on the job. The final Heavy Sci-Fi painting is by far the longest I've ever spent on a piece. It looks good, the band and 1912 records (who is releasing it) is pleased, but man am I glad it's finished. Painting geometric shapes was much more taxing than I imagined it would be. They had to be so precise, and even though I gave myself some room for it to look hand drawn, it was still taxing. I've been going to a lot more Gallery shows in the city lately, and I think the level of finish I've been seeing is what inspired me to spend so long on this painting.

Heavy Sci-Fi is an elaborate concept album, which in some ways made my job easy, because there was a long and elaborate story behind the lyrics, but it also made my some difficult, because not all of the story was clear from the lyrics. We worked it out relatively painlessly, but it was almost like doing illustrations for Lord of the Rings based solely on the overview printed on the back of the book.