The second in the series of "Cleveland Bachelor Show of The Month" posters for http://clevelandbachelor.blogspot.com. This time it's for the Beachland Christmas show, featuring Bears, Unsparing Sea, The Modern Electric, Shit Slicer, Mystery of Two, Terminal Lovers, and All Dinosaurs. Seven local bands filling both the Ballroom and The Tavern, not a bad way to spend the night before Christmas Eve.
This was drawn from a photo reference that I actually took, but am not posting because it's a pretty crappy photo. I like The Terminal Tower, though. How awesome would our lives be if the original plan for Goodyear to use the observation deck as a terminal for dirigible travel between Cleveland and New York City had actually been feasible and worked? "Pretty goddamn awesome." is the answer. Hey, it could still happen. Dirigible travel might be the next best thing.
I'm old enough to remember the Cleveland Skyline when the Terminal was the tallest building, and when the plans to build the BP Building included making it taller than the Terminal, it was kind of a big deal. I vaguely remember that Cleveland freaked out at the idea of something new surpassing something traditionally held as the standard. Didn't matter though, Key Tower went up 6 years later. Skyscrapers, what an awesome idea.
Our hero, this time drinking a milkshake from UDF, outside, in the cold. I'm a huge fan of the UDF milkshake. They're open until 1AM! My favorite is the chocolate peanut-butter, extra thick. I always go to the Lakewood one, and there's always something weird going on. Just those weirdos that are only ever hanging around in Lakewood, buying smokes or standing next to the payphone. Always an adventure. Sometimes I wonder how long it will be before I'm one of those weirdos.
I just drew the text by hand, I didn't lay it out first. I figured by now I kind of know what I'm doing with this stuff. I like using the banners on something like this, but then it took me forever to land on the colors I eventually ended up with. I tried a hundred different schemes.
This is what the snow layer looks like when I scan it. Black ink splattered on white paper. I used to just splatter white acrylic paint right on the art, but then coloring that and keeping the snow white would be impossible. So I've evolved to simplify.
It's the holidays, so the city lights up the Terminal with a red and green glow, it looks okay. I will say though, the lights in Public Square are pretty bonkers. I don't really remember if I even saw them last year or ...paid attention any other year, but this year I drove down Superior and my eyes got rocked. I'm a pretty grumpy dude, maybe, but I really love Christmas lights.
So, I drop the character in on top of the background, which, sometimes I don't do this. Sometimes I draw it all as one, but this time I kind of knew I wanted the white stroke around The Cleveland Bachelor. Also, I think I was still working on the text layout when I started drawing the art. So if I needed to re-size the character, it makes that a lot easier.
So, I take that piece of black ink splattered white paper, make it a layer over the background but under the character. Then inverse it so it's white on black, then just delete the black so all I have is white splatter on the art. I almost opted to not use this technique on this one because it obscures the background so much, but then when I ran a proof, it looked awesome. So, yeah, snow.
I'm really not looking forward to the snow this year. I mean, it's beautiful and it makes the warmth of being bundled up and cozy that much more warm and cozy, but goddamn. I hope me typing this doesn't call upon the winter demons to come forth and lay frozen waste to my city. I'd like at least a couple more weeks of sludge free wheeling.
