Posters & Music Album Covers
Brad's talents extend to incredibly gorgeous poster creations and music album artwork. Even with today's digital music releases on iTunes and other music services, your music demands appropriate and attractive cover art that grabs attention.
ALBUM COVER FOR OXBLOOD FORGE: Early in 2020, Brad’s Nephew Erik asked if he could create a cool album cover for his rock band called “Oxblood Forge”. The band members liked the style of such artists as Frank Frazetta, which showed medieval warriors violently clashing with their opponents. Brad jumped at the chance to create such a work since Frazetta was one of his idol artists while growing up. Brad hired a muscular body builder to model for the main character, and then digitally painted in all of the details of the body armor, including ox skulls, wolf’s fur lining, and metal skirt. The dragon was physically sculpted in 3 Dimensions, down to the detailed scales on the skin. The sculpture was then photographed using a small penlight covered with a blue jell to illuminate the lower jaw of the dragon.
CALIFORNIA BREWERIES POSTER: Brad was commissioned to create a unique poster for Preferred Connect Insurance Center, promoting their support for California's small businesses. The poster features a complex image of a glass of beer in the shape of the state of California, surrounded by a list of 700 independent beer breweries operating in the state. Brad says "I used two reference images to paint this image. One was a relief map of California, and the other was a photo of a foaming glass of beer." The results are quite arresting and unusual.
CONN-MANN CHRONICLES POSTERS: In 2013, while Brad was working for Zumaya Publications he produced a book cover for a novel entitled “The Marvelous Mechanical Man.” This was to be the first in a series of Steampunk novels by author Rie Sheridan Rose, called the “Conn-Mann Chronicles”. The author was so happy with the artwork that she later commissioned Brad to do a promotional poster featuring the characters from the book.
Brad first purchased a multitude of tiny watch parts and then photographed each of them using a close-up lens. He then painstakingly cut each out digitally and layered them onto the poster to create the intricate framework of gears surrounding the figures.
After purchasing an old fashioned, pioneer dress for his wife, and a lab coat and vest for himself Brad photographed himself and his wife in costume as models for the two main characters. The faces were then repainted using stock photos as reference material. Various textures were applied to the image — such as a tweed fabric pattern for the pants, and a parchment texture to the background to give it the appearance of aged paper.
SET IN STONE POSTER: In 2015 Brad was contacted by an author Frank Morin to do the first in a series of three books called the “Petralist” series, a fantasy story about characters that could absorb and utilize powers from stone. The author provided Brad with a symbolic idea of the main character having a body made of stone and breaking out of a granite block, like a statue freeing itself from an encasing stone. Brad experimented by doing sketches of muscular men in various poses swinging a hammer, and finally decided on one the author liked. Using a stock, reference photo of an athlete swinging a hammer he desaturated the pinkish flesh tones to turn them gray, and then applied a marbeled texture over the skin. Final lighting details as well as a younger face were painted in place.
The block of “stone” was created by sculpting a small scale prop in modeling clay, and then tapping the surface over and over again with a stipple brush to give the surface a rough, granite-like texture. The clay model of the stone was then photographed and digitally combined with the painting of the man. The lettering for the poster was digitally painted to appear like chipped obsidian (a blackish, volcanic rock with a glassy appearance).
SCHOOLED IN MAGIC: This special edition poster was commissioned by Christopher G. Nuttall, author of the "Schooled in Magic" 6-book fantasy series, published by Twilight Times Books. Although the cover art for the last two books in the series is still in progress, Mr. Nuttall asked Brad to do a poster displaying each of the main characters featured in the novels. After an initial sketch was completed and approved by the author, each character was painted as a separate work and then digitally combined into the poster.
Brad, who is also a professional photographer, used images he had taken of models in costume to create the large, central character as well as the Medusa creature at lower right. The rest of the characters were digitally painted using stock photos as reference for the faces, and clippings of medieval clothing to assist with painting the garments.
The Medusa character was created as its own complete painting including a full background environment, and is currently featured as the first image on the Home page of this website.
LOVE AND MONEY ALBUM: Early in 2014 Brad was approached by an up and coming musician from Florida to create an album cover for a new music CD. The idea was to show the musician as a mystical wizard with a steampunk* look, complete with a rocket ship soaring to the moon. The original concept was complex and started with angels hovering to in the background. After doing a complete work of art with that concept, this idea was scrapped in place of a rocket ship. Brad first designed a "Buck Rogerish" type ship, and then sculpted it out of clay. The clay model was then photographed and was used it as a reference to digitally paint the ship streaking across the sky.
* Steampunk: A genre of science fiction that typically features elements of futuristic steam-powered machinery rather than advanced electronic technology
TYRANNOS BAND POSTER & LOGO: In 2010 one of Brad's nephews, a drummer in the "Swarms of Tyranny" hard rock band, asked if Brad could design the logo for his group.
The name of the band later changed, so the early artwork for the logo was never used. Brad continued to evolve the idea into what eventually became the "Tyrannos" logo.
Most of the work was digitally hand painted as separate layers for the birdman, cross and the outer ring. The gritty, rusted texture was downloaded from CGTextures.com, and was laid onto parts of the image.
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