Monday 10 January 2011

Mac Format- Sgt Pepper Homage



Here is a full page illustration that's just seen print in the most recent copy of Mac Format, this was completed just before Christmas and was quite the epic undertaking!

Alex Thomas the AD of Mac Format had given me some truly great briefs throughout 2010, the results of which can be seen in other posts, however I think he was leaving his very best until the end of the year with this one.

With the whole Beatles catalogue now being downloadable from I Tunes, Alex came up with this truly great idea of doing a homage/parody of Sir Peter Blake's iconic Sgt Pepper artwork, I think that left to my own devices at some point or other I was destined to re-draw this image at some point, it's one of those that I would do as a personal/promotional image... so to actually have this brief fall into my lap was a real gift!

The concept for this was as simple as it was complex to draw, fill out the crowd of people with a list of Apple's most famous employees and devotees, with the list in hand; made up of a lot of CEO types, celebrities etc... I then went about the mammoth task of drawing over 40 portraits in one image!

The black and white line underdrawing if I remember correctly was created surprisingly quickly, something like 3/4 days, the colouring and fine tuning of this took a great deal longer, it became quite exhausting if i'm being honest, but sometimes your best images are like this, there needs to be a little struggle along the way.. I dare say some of my favorite pieces are often hard fought affairs, that extra hardship can often bring about the best results.

The middle line drawing is a key to all the characters drawn, this was also printed in the magazine.

The resulting final colour image is one of my personal favorites to see print over the last twelve months; this in terms of both the actual illustration, the concept and I know how much work I put into this, while also trying to juggle other jobs... it was a very busy period there, and I came out I think with some really nice work, and a reputation I hope enhanced from the experiences of late November through to December 2010.

Hold on, because some more biggies are coming to this page soon!

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