A few months ago, the awesome and amazing musician/performer/poet Amanda Palmer (formerly of the Dresden Dolls, now performing solo with a new band The Grand Theft Orchestra) reached out to me to create some art for her upcoming book and tour. Her plan was to get a bunch of artists to create visual interpretations of her new songs and herself. The results were going to be compiled in a book that would be coming out around the same time as her new album. In addition to this, she was going to do a set of acoustic performances/gallery shows where the art would be exhibited. Being a fan of such artistic collaborations and AFP, I jumped to the task! As a result, two pieces were created – one based on the song (more on that in the future post) and one depicting Amanda:

So as far as the process goes… Bellow are some images of Amanda that provide just a tiny glimpse into her personality. Her live shows are incredibly theatrical and electrifying, going way beyond being defined by any one genre. The lyrics are smart, sharp, funny and poignant.

Bellow is the initial sketch that I have actually done a year ago while working on some t-shirt designs for Amanda. Since that time, I’ve gotten to know and understand her art and music a little better. While coming up with ideas, some old medieval alchemy images started to come to mind (like the one on the right). The final result turned out to be a hybrid of those two approaches.

The initial image was a linoleum cut (on the left), actual print (on the right).

After scanning the print into Photoshop, I’ve started to think of how this could appear in color. I broke the image down to three colors and also added a background layer of the smoke in the background. Bellow are the four files I’ve used to create the screens from, initially deciding that one is going to be black, the other brown, next one dark green and the last one light blue. Some of those would overlap when printed.

And here’s how it all started to come together when the screens were all done and the printing process had begun.

As always, the plan was to crank this out in one night. As it happens, it took two whole nights just to get all the inks mixed and figured out. Of course there were little surprises along the way. This time after spending a few hours coming up with a perfect color combination I had to throw the inks out and start from scratch, simply because those particular inks would not cooperate with the paper.

Working my way from background to foreground, light to dark. The final pass was the black layer.

And here are a few detail shots.

This is the print alongside the one I’ve made for one of the songs.

Since sending those out to Amanda’s headquarters they have traveled to London, Berlin, Paris, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston. They are also now available at Etsy for sale. Bellow is a picture of Amanda in front of them at one of the gallery show events (I believe that one is from London). More on those events, shows, the book those will appear in and the art talk that Amanda and I did in San Francisco a bit later.