Gig Posters: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century v. 1

Notes

Gig Posters Research

- I recently took the book 'Gig Posters: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century v. 1' out of LCA library. I've found this year, through both research and live briefs, that music illustration is something I've really become interested in. It combines my love of both visual art and music together, and I think the format of gig posters can really push illustrators to make some insanely good work.
- Though I got this book out mainly for a bit of artistic inspo, I found a few practitioners within the book that I decided to make a note of to see how their overall illustration practice works, and where their work sits (in contexts outside of just music illustration).
- Quite a few of the illustrators I looked at worked as part of specific print / poster collectives as well as working on their own. Perhaps this is something I should look into myself? (Prints of Thieves, Black Dragon Press etc?)
- The use of line and colour in a lot of these prints really stuck out to me, I feel as though I've made a bit of a break through this year in how I like to work, and line-work has become a big part of that. Though I initially got the inspiration for line through tattooists that I followed on instagram, a lot of these gig poster artists show a way of using that line-work in a more commercial field.
- I'd love to push my work in this direction a little more. Something I'm very conscious of this year is that I've had very little time to work on self initiated briefs. So while I've completed a lot of projects this year, I'm unsure how much of it I'd happily stick into my portfolio. I guess this is something to consider moving forward.