The theme of my vinyl album were along the lines of nostalgia, childhood, growing up and the emotions that came along with our coming of age. Years ago, music meant something different and music to me captures moments lost forever or an essence of time.
Initially, I aimed at capturing the designs of albums which were the top hits in 2000s but I soon realised it was too broad a topic to capture and I had to narrow it down and focus on a specific style of albums; which were old school boy bands like Backstreet Boys, Fall Out Boys, Green Day etc.
Since I also wanted to capture the emotions of coming of age, my initial drafts also revolved around children in contemplation or teenagers looking out into the big city.
But I decided to stick with boy bands and something strictly vintage/nostalgic; thus painting the lead singer of The Kooks on a concert stage. It was really tedious to paint layers over layers of darker shades, details, where light his the face, or where shadows are created.
Instead of the laser beams of modern concerts, spotlights were more common in 2000. And to create the effect of bright light shining, was really difficult to do. I used a crayon to colour the circles and smeared it around to create a diffusive effect. Then painted over. I also clipped out little aluminium circles to paste over some of the circles to create that reflective, glamorous edge.
The neon light that spells “KONK” was inspired by one of their photographed appearance at a nightclub and that was a significant moment for The Kooks. It signified their rise in fame and popularity and changed the direction for the group into mainstream music and pop culture. The neon light was created also with blue and white crayon and then painted over with white. The entire piece was painted and the greatest difficulty were fixing mistakes; the difficulty in mixing the right tones and shades, adjusting and re-adjusting, covering up paint splatters etc.
The back of the album cover was inspired by old school vintage albums such as the following.
