Cover Illustration for Andy Warhol Exhibition

Posted on 10/06/2012 by Miko

I have been com­mis­sioned to cre­ate the cov­er illus­tra­tion for the edu­ca­tion­al trail of the Andy War­hol exhib­i­tion at the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gal­lery.

Nice job, but made harder as one isn't allowed to rep­lic­ate Andy Warhol's work.

  • So cre­at­ive think­ing cap on.
  • My usu­al brain storm­ing ses­sion of sketch­ing and jot­ting down what ever ideas occur.
  • I nev­er ques­tion them, con­sider weth­er they are good or bad, that would inter­rupt the cre­at­ive flow.
  • I just con­cen­trate, sketch and jot.
  • When I think I've emp­tied my brain, I then go to the edit­ing stage.
  • Simply going through all my jot­tings and sketches, omit­ting the weak­est and then repeat­ing the pro­cess.

Fin­ish­ing up in this case with Andy Warhol's glasses, his pop art images and Camp­bell Soup, I chose these as I think they will make a nice image.

So, here is the res­ult:

Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Cover

Andy War­hol Camp­bell Soup Cov­er

I don't like images that are too obvi­ous and there­fore insult­ing the view­er. It's a dif­fi­cult line to tread between the obvi­ous and obscure, or off the wall. I wanted to make it a graph­ic image, so I cre­ated a spoon full of steam­ing soup above a bowl of tomato soup.

I rather liked the image, it encour­ages thought and obser­va­tion and it is styl­ish. BUT cli­ent didn't!!!!! Shame!!

So back to the draw­ing board. I wanted to keep the glasses image, so, again using an Andy War­hol tech­nique I copied and pas­ted them in rows and changed the col­ours.

Andy Warhol Spectacles Cover Illustration

Andy War­hol Spec­tacles Cov­er Illus­tra­tion

I don't mind the end res­ult, but I still prefer the first image. What do you think? I would appre­ci­ate your thoughts.

I will be put­ting the head­ing of 'Andy War­hol' on the top of each illus­tra­tion and cre­at­ing giclée prints. So they'll be avail­able soon, look out for an announce­ment.

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2 Responses to Cover Illustration for Andy Warhol Exhibition

  1. Marian says:
    12/06/2012 at 16:14

    Inter­est­ing and cre­at­ive. The copy­right issue is indeed a chal­lenge! I think you solved it really well. 

    In the first image, the con­cent­ric circles look like tar­gets – is that inten­tion­al? I won­der if that's part of what the cli­ent didn't like? Or maybe just the omis­sion of the spoon and bowl made them feel it was too obscure? (Did they give you any spe­cif­ic feed­back bey­ond "don't like"?)

    For me, the image con­jured a sense of a dog for some reas­on. Maybe because the spoon-soup "nose" is more dog-nose shaped than human-nose shaped, and the bowl-soup "mouth" is wide, like a dog bark­ing or pant­ing. Or maybe it's just my own weird, idio­syn­crat­ic ima­gin­a­tion that's the cul­prit! ;-D

    The eye­glasses theme of the second image is apt, giv­en that the art is visu­al and each vis­it­or has their own fil­ters through which they look at and see the exhib­it.

    As I say, very inter­est­ing and cre­at­ive. Well done! 🙂

    • Miko says:
      12/06/2012 at 17:38

      Thank you very much Mari­an. I didn't put the spoon or bowl in because this illus­tra­tion is for a cov­er for an exhib­i­tion of Andy Warhol's work. So it's not an image that needs to be under­stood and recog­nised imme­di­ately, unlike a com­mer­cial image which needs to cap­ture the atten­tion of a buy­er straight away. In fact like all works at the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gal­lery it is to be con­sidered and thought about. It would have helped per­haps, in the recog­ni­tion of bowl and spoon, to have added a graph­ic hint of a shad­ow. I was rather hop­ing the curves of the soup trails would have indic­ated these shapes.
      Thank you for your thoughts and I'm glad you find the works inter­est­ing and cre­at­ive.