It's been a long time, been long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time

Well as you can see it has been far too long since I've posted here, but it's not for a lack of work. I've been doing a lot of design work for Cantalouper, whom I've mentioned in my one previous post. Mostly posters for shows, t shirts, buttons, and a hand drawn font. All of which I'll get posted on here very soon! But today's post is one that I'm particularly fond of at the moment. It is a poster that I finished a few weeks ago for a show Cantalouper will be doing with a band called Unwed Sailor. If you've never heard of them, I suggest you check them out. They're an instrumental only band, musically centered around the bass guitar. Good stuff! Anyways, Cantalouper asked me to do this poster for the show in July and as an added bonus, the venue, Mojo's, would print the poster and use it in their club to promote the show! Needless to say I was pretty stoked about it.
It took me a few days to get the imagery that I wanted for this show. I listened to Unwed Sailor to get a feel for the type of music they made, wanting the poster to feel right for the band. I also wanted to stay away from the overtly stereotypical nautical images that one thinks of upon hearing the name Unwed Sailor. I think I found the balance I was looking for with the life preserver ring, stenciled with the bands and date of the show. I also like the wooden plank background which reminded me of an old tugboat making its way up the eastern seaboard and the cool blue waves along the bottom. The waves were a holdover thought from a previous sketch I had made for this poster. They reminded me of waves used on old Vaudeville sets. The ones that swayed from side to side while Vaudevillian pirates sang songs about mermaids. I thought they gave me a nice clear ground to add the rest of the venue info and really seemed to anchor (no pun intended) the whole poster.