66 Songs

Well, Lord knows how long it will take me to do 66 drawings - considering I'm still working on two drawings from last year. And not December last year either; SPRING of last year.

Whilst they are huge and time consuming, there are few things more depressing than not finishing things - so hopefully these 66 smaller pieces will give me some satisfaction alongside the endless crosshatching of trees.

Intro

I had this idea ages ago - but never got round to it. Over the last few years my work has become more and more about illustration and I have derived much more of my influence from music than I have from visual arts.

The forest drawings were inspired by old folk music (US and UK), murder ballads and the more contemporary music of Kristin Hersh and Nick Cave. (Forest images)

So I decided to pick five of my favourite albums:

Sunny Border Blue by Kristin Hersh
Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams
The Boatsman's Call by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Yes, Virginia by The Dresden Dolls
The Con by Tegan & Sara

and five of my favourite 'art styles' (or, at least, ones that I thought I might be able to do)

Baroque
Art Nouveau
Art Deco
Gothic Illustration
Monoprinting (OK, not really a 'style' - but I love monoprinting and it is, at least, something I can do)

Put each set into a hat and draw them out in pairs. The plan being that I would illustrate each album, song by song, in that style; hopefully producing a coherent book of illustrations for each album.