Development work for album cover.

Developing elements for my album cover.

Digitally enhancing my paintings. 

I chose to paint a wolf in watercolour using bright, abstract colours, I added a paint dripping and splashing technique to the paper too. I decided to paint a wolf to portray Enter Shikari because the meaning of wolves as spirit animals is: "Sharp intelligence, an appetite for freedom, lack of trust of someone" (http://www.spiritanimal.info/wolf-spirit-animal/). This describes Enter Shikari as a band and much of what they sing about; an inside knowledge of corruption within the world and higher powers, a need for social change and a fear and lack of trust in the government and corporate powers.

 

I first used brightness and contrast to bring the painting to more of a realistic finish, with brighter whites and more vibrant colours, I also used the clone stamp to remove my signature from the bottom right hand corner of the painting. I wanted to make the colour really stand out compared to what the photograph of the painting has picked up and so I used the colour options to enhance the magneta, blue, cyan and red. I then used the dodge tool to lighten the centre of the wolf as this is centre of the painting, to blend this I used a slight purple colour gradient on radical with the opacity at only 15% to  blend the colours.

After I'd edited the image the first time I was happy with the result for as a digitally enhanced photo, but it wasn't refined enough to use on an album cover design, to achieve a more appropriate look I used the selection wand tool to precisely cut out around the wolf's face, although this cut off the background I feel it improved the image. I worked more with the improving the colours on the wolf and decided to work with more blues and winter colours, to do this I went into the colour setting, levels, curves and changed the settings until I was happy with the results. I also worked more closely into the painting by zooming in at 400% and adding colour via the paintbrush tool to the eyes, nose, and some assed colour lines in the fur. I am happy with how the wolf has turned out and feel the bright colours, meaning and definition will all help in making the animal the centrepiece of the design.