I’ve recently finished up this full page illo based upon The Smiths ‘Meat is Murder’. The great idea which was put forward by Mark Wagstaff is based around The Cribs apparently going all vegetarian. Along with this the recent addition of ex Smiths guitarist band member Johnny Marr added to the strength of the idea.

When approaching the job I first felt inclined to do quite a tight realistic render of the band members but after re-thinking it decided to make a more loose characterized approach. I did this for a few reasons, one being that the band members are 3 brothers (two twins) and look very alike. They are only separated by their haircuts which if I followed the Meat is murder album cover would be covered by helmets. The solution to this was to hint the haircuts along with key features of each member. Mark also wanted to add some of their song’s as slogans on the helmets and to further strengthen the band members as individuals I gave them all a slight uniqueness to their expressions to match the slogans. A consistent light angle, background and helmet details helped to futher relate to the Meat is Murder cover.

Heres my linework:

After this I then went on to do some quick fills in photoshop along with a rough render of the light then printed this out and painted with acrylic, both by brush, ink and in an old cleaning spray bottle (to spray a subtle ‘dirty’ effect). I then scanned this in gray scale 16bit and proceeded to apply some sepia-like tone, along with some quick vintage effects to reach the final below:

I was quite happy with the outcome and felt the relevance to the band members/vegetarian/smiths and editorial was well achieved thanks to the art direction and execution. If you know (or google) the band members faces it would better the understanding of how difficult this ‘could’ have been!

Thanks A