Made my first album/song cover art for a friend’s band! Wasn’t exactly what I planned when I started, but I think it turned out great. The song felt like Summer to me, so I made a Summer sunset out of grass and flowers.
I asked a local swap/donation group on Facebook if anyone had any flowers growing in their yards and didn’t mind if I came by to collect them, and three folks helped!
- The pink in the top right and the white in the bottom left came from a lady’s side yard. My daughter helped me collect them and the lady remembered when her own daughter helping with the garden when she was a kid.
- The orange flowers lined about 20′ of street frontage at the end of a cul-de-sac and the lady wanted them gone because they were blocking her driveway. I did my best to take out the weeds, too!
- A local florist also collected a bag of scraps from her day’s work and left them on her porch for me, which is how I got the large, pretty pinks and reds.
- The backing green material is just bagged lawn trimmings from a fresh mow.
The original idea was to put the band’s name and the song’s name in rope, with white rope over the pink/purple flowers in the top right and blue rope over the white/orange flowers in the bottom left. I had glued and laid out the letters with white rope a few days before I got the flowers, hoping I could just lay the string down on the flowers when it was time for the photo. Seemed like a great idea, but the whole thing fell apart as soon as I took it out of the clamps. The string was still stiff from the glue, though, so I had to scrap that idea.
I only had an hour or so before the petals wilted, so I used the rest of my blue cord for the song title and came up with a new plan for the band name. I cut some scrap rip cuts from a 2×4 into 3.5″ pieces, painted them yellow/orange, added the letters, and hoped it would match the orange flowers well enough to make a cool contrasting color over the pink/purple section. I figured orange on pink is usually so hideous, it would have to stand out well.
I had planned the photo for noon so I could get the best light, but a few delays meant I had to deal with some shadows that weren’t supposed to be there. I spread everything out over a 4×4 pallet to make a “canvas” for the flowers and used ripped sections of 2x4s for the frame. At first, I thought putting the lawn trimmings on the pallet was unnecessary, but it was vital when I had to relocate the pallet to get better lighting. I upped the brightness and saturation in edits to make it the colors stand out more and think it turned out really well!
Click here to listen to “Likee Holiday” by Royal Catchflys: https://royalcatchflys.bandcamp.com/track/likee-holiday
