Spotlight: Give the Drummer Some
Spotlight: Give the Drummer some is a 10-piece collection of vector-illustrated album covers that showcases 10 drummers that I truly love, and respect and who have been an inspiration to me as a drummer myself.Why this Project?
The first reason why I wanted to create a project like this is that I wanted to create something that represents my passion for music, the art of drumming, graphic design, and illustration. The second and most important reason why I wanted to create this is that I wanted to put drummers at the forefront and spread their value to music in pop culture. Normally when one goes to a concert they go to see the artist perform unless they are musicians themselves or they are considered music purists to go for deeper reasons. The drummer is the foundation of the music and the one that locks everyone together. They are the loudest instrument in the room naturally and can make a person bust out the craziest dance moves or execute the most calming foot taps. It's not hard to miss us but we are always in the back unless given a section to solo in the show. While in the musician community drummers are well-known, respected, and valued but this community does not make up the majority of the world. Simply put it is knowing who drummers are isn't common knowledge in context to the artists they work with unless you are a Questlove from The Roots or a Travis Barker type. So I created these designs to highlight drummers that play for very well-known mainstream artists to give them the spotlight and give some love (or a lot) to show them an appreciation for who they are, what they bring to music, and they are to be noticed. Tools Used for the Project
Software: Adobe Illustrator, PhotoshopFormat: Album cover sizing; 12 x 12in squares Deliverables: 10 Drummer vector illustrations, 10 Artist vector illustrations as matched sets, Vinyl mockups, Apple Music Mockups, Spotify Mockups
Style Inspirations
I first got into vector-based portraiture or vector cartoon illustration by watching a very successful digital artist on YouTube named ChiWorld1234 who is known for his cartoon head creations of celebrities, athletes, fictional characters, etc. Seeing his art inspired me to take my illustration skills digitally so I would watch all of his tutorial videos to learn how to create those types of art pieces. Then when it came to this project I used him and other artists that I admired as inspiration for the type of style and formatting I wanted to make for my vector pieces.Color & Aesthetic
The first inspiration for how I approached skin tone base colors, highlights, and shadows was layered soil illustrations. I chose soil or the ground because I wanted the skin of my illustrations to display "earthy tones" and each layer is arranged from light to dark. God the creator of all things created us from the very ground we walk on and when the beat drops or the drums come in our feet tap/hit the ground when we dance.The second inspiration was camouflage print for patterns. Camouflage print is a personal favorite of mine and I wanted to incorporate the shapes and patterns into my illustration in some way. So used it as an influence for how I shaped the highlights and darks and how they would overlap as far as placement.
The Process
The process of creating vector illustrations or digital illustrations goes into three phases: Line work, Color, and Tones similar to drawing by hand where you draw a rough sketch lay the foundation with refined line work, then finally add the details.I started with basic line work for each person basically drawing them out and making sure the lines were refined enough to connect. After this, I proceeded with color, foundational colors for the skin, eyes, etc. Doing this basically completes vector illustrations for the most part but for what I wanted to capture tones were my next focus. Tones consist of mid-tones, shadows, and highlights. Using camouflage print and layers of soil as my inspiration I created custom shapes to work as a form of shading. For mid-tones I picked colors that were just a tiny shade darker than the base color, shadows three shades, darker, and highlights 3 shades lighter. After that, I would take the tones and manipulate the tint by increasing the reds to give the illustration some warmth. All this was done using Adobe Illustrator.Line WorkColorTone
The Design
The final project consists of 10 drummer vector art album covers. Each cover has names of famous artists they have worked with hidden in the background with low opacity. Each cover has a silhouette of a drum set to identify each person as a drummer, and the illustrations themselves are wrapped with an outer glow effect as symbolism for the spotlight that is being put on them.Here we have Jamal Moore who is one of my favorite drummers and drummers for the project. He is from the DMV area where I am also from and has been a major influence on me as a musician. He has worked with artists such as Kelly Rowland, TLC, The Backstreet Boyz, and more. If you zoom in very closely you can actually see some names of the artist he has played for. Normally the artists are the ones that we see but what I want when people see these designs are the drummers who make the audience move, the unsung heroes in music if you will.Normally the artists are the ones that we see but what I want when people see these designs are the drummers who make the audience move, the unsung heroes in music if you will.This is the system I used for all 10 designs below:Reflection
I consider this a passion project of mine. It highlights two of my passions and is also something that I felt brought awareness to something bigger than myself that sparks an interesting conversation. Hopefully, these designs will spark an interest in the world of drummers and how they impact our music experience. I am truly grateful to have created these wonderful pieces.