OUAN503 - Secret 7" - Etta James, At Last

For the Etta James record sleeve I dug a little deeper in order to find an interesting idea for some imagery that would work well on a record sleeve. I looked at some information about Etta James herself, and thought that the information I found about her being born in Los Angeles, and the decade that this particular track was released called for some artwork based around those facts. My first instinct was to produce an interpretation of the landscape during that decade in the 60's, with the cars from that decade and other artefacts. Another idea I had was to have a woman waiting at an airport with her luggage, and a taxi arriving to pick her up. This is quite a literal interpretation of title, but still carries an interesting story with it. Making the audience ask questions; who is she waiting for? Where is she going?

This piece essentially started as another exploration of media, specifically gouache. I chose to look into some 1960's photographs of Los Angeles and the types of buildings and transport and environments that were apparent of the time, before starting to paint a car. I feel like the type of car I ended painting is quite reflective of the time. It was also quite refreshing for me to use more traditional media to create this piece. The original piece was a lot larger than just the car on its own, and was of a whole scene. However, I soon began to realise that this wouldn't have worked quite so well as a record sleeve because it felt too detached, and by this I mean lack of focus. It felt to vague and disconnected from the purpose that I was trying to use it for and so I honed in on a small portion of the image and refined it slightly as a centre piece for the final image. I have used the combination of digital and traditional media since I began creating images of this nature and used it again once it was scanned in to retouch the colours and levels in the image. As well as this, small adjustments were made such as creating the effect of the headlights glowing which I think brought a lot to the image as a whole. Furthermore, it allowed me to add a horizon line and some clouds to give the scene a sense of placement as oppose to simply being a car. I think its these small touches that bring the image up from what it was to something a lot better. Overall, this image was another attempt to try something new not just in the use of media and physical approach to the task but also looking into the idea and the philosophy behind the design. Also trying to create intelligent work and interesting design with thought and fuelled by research as oppose to simply illustrating the title of the track like I mentioned with the other record sleeves I've illustrated so far. Ultimately it was quite a fun and challenging record sleeve to make and it was fun to use gouache paint again to create something with, it has made me want to continue using it for other pieces of work. I specifically like gouache because of its diversity as a tool. It can be layered onto a canvas thicker like acrylic or oil paint but also watered down to behave like watercolour, for example. It's diversity was something that made me glad I revisited it, and perhaps I'll use it for other briefs where I can, and if not for more of the designs in this brief. One of the most satisfying stages in the design process for me, usually comes at the end. It's not the most challenging or mentally taxing by any means but I enjoy the section of time at the end that is dedicated to balancing the colours, and essentially finalising and aspects of the images that are subject to change. It's especially enjoyable because it takes a small amount of time and effort to improve areas of the image that can bring it up to another standard. This is something I tried quite a lot with this image. Since it was painted traditionally there were changes that were made in terms of the way the colours looked on screen from the scanning process that made me want to revisit it and change it slightly. The final thing I did, which I'm still unsure about was add some noise to the image to break up the colour and give it a grain as if it was painted on a textured surface, or even that of an old film photograph. These did add a certain element of authenticity to the image now it looked more dated, and in tune with the 60's era it was portraying.

Etta James - At Last