THE FINAL ARTWORK

Here’s the my final work! The concept behind the illustration is an imagined scene of what would go down if the creators of revolution songs came together in one big battle to contest for the title of Best Revolution Song. You can also view it as a pdf here.

THE PROCESS

First off, I started by picking the theme Activism. I created a moodboard for my illustration to set the tone and colour palette. You can view it as a pdf here.

I was really interested in exploring the use of music in activism, such as in revolutions, riots or even popular culture where music has been used as a form of anti-establishment art. Based on these ideas, I generated 16 thumbnail sketches which largely revolved around more revolutionary music as I thought it would be interesting to illustrate more historical figures in a fun and wackier manner.

From there, I narrowed it down to 3 compositions I liked the most, which are outlined in orange. Using my thumbnail sketches, I created more detailed pencil comps.

I decided to go with the first composition as the concept was the most interesting, and I really liked reimagining the stoic, solemn characters we often see represented in historical paintings as frantic, crazy characters. The second composition would not have worked well with the page architecture as there were details on the bottom, which is already text heavy. The third composition wasn’t as visually interesting and the message of the illustration was not as clear cut.

My inspiration for the first composition was mainly from Renaissance paintings, with a very strong pyramidal composition. There is also one key figure rising above the rest, and the paintings use strong contrasting lighting to create a sense of drama and dynamism.

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix

The Raft of The Medusa by Jean Louis Theodore Gericault

For my actual composition, I referenced a screenshot from Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do music video where she is standing on a pile of her older selves trying to get to the top. For the backdrop, I looked up several talent shows and finally settled on America’s Got Talent’s stage design, which featured a huge central star and beams of light shooting from the sides.

Still from Look What You Made Me Do

Stage of America's Got Talent

LINEWORK

Here is the initial sketch of the composition, and the final line work.

For the various characters, I referenced paintings or photographs to figure out each character’s persona and fashion.

 
French general for the French Revolution song, La Marseillaise

 
Spanish anarchist for revolutionary songs that appeared during the Spanish Civil War

   
Italian opera singer and the Mondina women who created the Italian protest song, Bella Ciao

 
General from the American Civil War

 
Laskarina Bouboulina, a Greek naval commander for the Greek War of Independence

COLOURING

I started the colouring process by referencing the colour palette I had chosen to use in my moodboard. As the illustration was set in a concert venue, I also referenced photos of concert lighting. The idea was to create the dramatic lighting seen in those Renaissance paintings but with coloured lights.

 
Photographs from the DMA'S concert

 
 
Experiments with colour and lighting upon the face

Here is a short gif showing my colouring process. I did most of the colouring on Procreate, and then imported it over to Photoshop to make some final adjustments and colour tweaks. I used Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance and Brightness filters to push the pink and teal in the illustration even more.

All in all, I had a lot of fun illustrating this! It was great to explore the different poses, colours and historical clothing. I really liked reimagining them in this almost nonsensical context which might trigger people’s interests in the topic of music and activism.