Nirvana In Utero

I chose to create a band poster dedicated to Nirvana's In Utero era. I selected this band as they represent a pivotal breakthrough in rock & roll, transitioning popular American music from hair metal into a deeper, grungier, soulful melancholy that acted as a soundtrack to the 90's. Many Millennials and Gen Xers will cite Nirvana as one of their most influential bands, myself included. I wanted to pay tribute to a time and band that represents when music was raw and vulnerable and resonated with the Zeitgeist of popular culture.

Supplies (List in Ascending Order)

- Prismacolor double-ended black marker
- Pentel Black Micro brush pen
- Micron 005 pen
- Micron 003 pen
- Tombow Mono Zero eraser
- Papermate Widemate mechanical pencil #2 hb
- MOO eraser
- Wacom Intuos tablet w Pen
- Arches Watercolor Paper 140lb 10" x 14"

Software:
- Photopea

My vision for the project was to create a Nirvana tribute in the style of illustrated movie posters, akin to artists like Drew Struzan and Richard Amsel. Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha was also a source for inspiration, particularly from his Slav epic paintings. The initial plan was to do the entire process traditionally, starting with pencil roughs, inking, acrylic, and then a final layer of colored pencils. Many of the techniques were learned in Robert Sammelin's Domestika course for Cover Art.

To begin, I collected a multitude of reference images, both from Google image search, as well as creating a Nirvana Pinterest board, both with band member photo references and poster designs and the iconic In Utero anatomical angel. This helped me establish mood, color scheme, and potential poses of each group member. Using the program Photopea (similar to Photoshop), reference images, textures, text, and additional effects were administered to experiment with potential arrangements for the poster, until I came up with a rough mockup of the final piece.

Once I was happy with the rendering in pencil, I proceeded to inking. For my inks, I predominantly used a Pentel Micro Black Brush pen, with smaller details using Microns. To shade shadow areas, I used hatching and cross hatching techniques. For the Nirvana text, I used the Prismacolor Black Marker to fill the center, and a 6 inch ruler to make the text more precise.

Even though I had initially planned on coloring with acrylics, with the approaching contest deadline, I knew I might not have enough time to finish with a traditional medium. Instead, I opted for digital. I used my Android phone to take a photo of my inking, and brought the file into Photopea for coloring. I started by getting rid of the white background using the "Select Color" feature to select the white background and delete it, leaving just the ink.

Then, sampling colors from my initial mockup design, I started putting in the local colors for both the characters and background. The Nirvana text got a layer to make the black more uniform and matte.

Next, I Created a Shadow layer to add details that were darker, like lines in the shirts, planes in the face, and elements on the instruments, hair, etc.

The layer above that was for highlights and light areas, to accentuate and brighten planes facing the light.

To increase the grungy aesthetic, I sampled paint, dirt, and other textures and created layers to give a grittier feel. This included adding a grime textured clipping mask layer to the Nirvana text to unify with the other elements.

As a final touch and tribute, I included two Kurt Cobain's hand-written song lyrics from In Utero into the background of the poster, "All Apologies" and "Heart-Shaped Box".

The summation of the process, the finished piece.