{"id":1937,"date":"2015-04-20T09:43:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T13:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2015-04-20T09:44:41","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T13:44:41","slug":"evolution-of-an-album-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/evolution-of-an-album-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of An Album Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we’re making progress on my new album, Distorted Vision<\/em> — about which I’ll have more to say in the future — I thought some folks might be interested to see how the cover of Truths and Lies and Make-Believe<\/em> came about. Just as I could not have recorded the album by myself, I could not have put the cover together without the help of some very skilled people!<\/p>\n

First, here’s my original idea of what I wanted the cover to look like:<\/p>\n

\"Truths<\/p>\n

I made that image on PowerPoint, using a picture I found on the Internet and the poster idea I’d first used in flyers for the album. I wanted an old-timey feel to it, and something about the idea of putting up notices appealed to me. Eventually, instead of trying to do two rows of posters I decided to use a single row — primarily because it was less work!<\/p>\n

With the concept in mind, I drove around town looking for different places where we might stage the scene. I found several candidate walls in wood and cement and brick, and talked to nearby vendors about whether we could put up posters on them. Ultimately I got permission from the Creative Images<\/a> trophy and sign shop to use the wall and doorway on the side of their building.<\/p>\n

I went frugal with the posters: I printed them at Staples in a couple of different sizes to see what would work, then had enough printed for the photo shoot. They were printed on white paper that I “antiqued” with tea — specifically, a mix of black tea and some raspberry tea for a little reddish tint. (The tint comes through a little on the color versions of the photos — you can see a few of them on my web site<\/a>.) To hang the posters, I mixed up batches of wheatpaste from a recipe I found on the web.<\/p>\n

My photographer for the day was Paul Cory<\/a>, who had recruited several ladies to be passers-by and observers in the pictures of me putting up the posters. I had recruited my daughter Stephanie as well, and in addition to her we had a lady Jedi, a “steampunk pirate,” and the comic book character The Question. You can see them on the inside of the CD cover, like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The original color version of that image, without the “postcard” effect, is one of the backgrounds on my web site.<\/p>\n

Here’s the final cover design, as put together by my son Christopher<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I think it turned out to be a great realization of my original concept. And I very much appreciate everyone who helped make it a reality!<\/p>\n

You can see all the cover images, inside and outside, on the album’s Bandcamp page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 I adapted this blog post from an article sent previously to my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to receive my every-so-often newsletter, fill out the form here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we’re making progress on my new album, Distorted Vision — about which I’ll have more to say in the future — I thought some folks might be interested to see how the cover of Truths and Lies and Make-Believe came about. Just as I could not have recorded the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[432],"tags":[277,21],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-2","tag-filk","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1939,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}