Punk & Procreate

I’ve thought long and hard, perused my recent albums to try and think of something that I was really into when working on this. The Summer of 2023, for me, had this brilliant album on constant replay. One of those albums that bury into your brain and leave you with parts of the song ringing in your head at 4am.

This particular project has been incredibly interesting. It re-ignited long forgotten skills of preparing artwork for the traditional printing process that I had in me during the 90’s, and also gave me some in-roads to the world of digital art. I bought an iPad Pro several years ago and struggled like mad to become inspired enough to use it.

I Will Take You Hunting

Two life long friends from my High School days play in this Punk band. In fact, in our teenage years we were connected in bands playing Thrash Metal and Rock which was so much fun. I miss those days incredibly, and I miss my friends Steve and Dave. But we have kept in touch and that makes things so much better.

I Will Take You Hunting‘s (IWTYH) music is better listened to than explained. Steve and Dave are both highly accomplished musicians with very eclectic and varying tastes. Now, things may well have changed since the days when I was with them, but as I remember them with soft-focus-flashback spectacles; Dave was into very heavy Thrash Metal – Obituary, Voivod, Testament and this took him down the path of being probably one of the most talented percussionists in the North East of Scotland, venturing into all sorts of music such as World Music and Tradition Scottish Folk; Steve also had a foot in Thrash Metal with the likes of Testament, Slayer, the “Big Four”, but he also came from leftfield with Rock influences like Aerosmith and Van Halen, bands that had notable vocalists with unmistakable voices and you can hear those influences in his own unmistakable style.

Dave surprised me when he took to the guitar and bass, but it’s really a choice that has made IWTYH somewhat of a surprising experience. The music is stripped down to the basics, deliberately. Making room for their political and social commentary in the lyrics come to the fore. They are both very skilful when it comes to the recording studio, so this new album’s production has introduced other aspects that enrich their sound with sampling, keyboards and electronic drum tracks.

Lastly, IWTYH took on a new member, DJ Butterscotch. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet, or hearing the band live (with and without him). The new album “Not Broken” is further enhanced with his DJ mixing and scratching which is a percussive addition to their sound.

Not Broken – The concept and the illustrations

In early Summer 2023, they approached me to think of a design for the new album cover. I jumped at the chance, it’s a great feeling to be brought into a project like this. However, at the time I had little to go on. Most of the songs had not yet been finalised or even written, so it took some time trying to zero in on what they were after. A few sketches and online discussions.

It soon became clear that the album had several themes based on organised religion, global warning and various politics of the day. However, an overarching or recurring theme talks about mental health issues, and is very close to the band’s heart who deal with it themselves and the people in their lives.

I can’t fix me, I’m not broken
I can’t fix me I’m just different

– I Will Take You Hunting “Not Broken”

So another great thing about this project, is that I have learned a lot about “Neurodiversity”. Something which I was completely ignorant of, and I guess most people generally are. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m an expert in the field, but I am now far more armed to deal with this if I meet someone who  – I nearly said “suffers from it”. And that’s the point I think most of us make, I think. “Neurodiversity” is more of framework to understand mental illness. So for example, someone with Autism may suffer more from societal factors – our inability to treat them as normal – than the actual symptoms of Autism. I think I got that right? It also doesn’t come without its own controversy. I thank Steve and Dave for the education.

I used this new knowledge to create my outer cover illustrations, “The Emoto Machines” (it was a working title for an as yet untitled album). The machines represent the mechanics of our thoughts. The individual plumbing on how we process everything that hits us day-in / day-out. It’s complex and fragile in nature, especially when things might “go wrong” and the internal or external skills required in troubleshooting the location of that loose wire, or identify how one module can easily upset or overload another connected system downstream.

At the end of the process it is our individual wiring that is responsible for being able to convey or create something simplistic and beautiful. Just like any other complex system we have to be mindful of “crap in, crap out”, while maintaining kind regard for everyone else’s machines in order integrate and communicate betwen them. That was partly my “day job” talking…

The Artwork Process

My process always starts on real paper. During my days at art college, it was always drummed into me that creativity needs to be tactile. This might be way different for the “young ‘uns” today who can start with an actual tablet which didn’t exist in the early 90s.

Once I have got to the point where the paper can’t handle any more eraser scrubs and I’m fairly happy with the layout, I will scan it. There might be some edits in Photoshop – enlarging a character’s head or moving some element. Then I’ll save it as a PNG and it’s ready to import into Procreate.

I am slowly getting used to the fiddly nuances of Procreate, using layers and swapping from brush to pen. The most fiddly thing was at the end where I had to ensure that the Colour Profile was set to something called “Coated FOGRA 39” which is apparently what most European print shops using on their presses. This issue only arose after I had imported the artwork into my Adobe Illustrator layouts.

Once in Illustrator the rest is quite easy and Scotlands first independent Vinyl production company Seabass Vinyl were incredibly friendly, understanding and helpful for a novice like me. Their upload and patient approval process leaves room for last minute corrections, and they even alerted me to several potential mistakes I made. When I designed the label for the middle of the vinyl disc I hadn’t bothered to explicitly label them “Side 1” and “Side 2” – a result of Streaming and listening solely to CDs for the past few decades, it never occurred to me. Luckily, Seabass saved me at the 11th hour and I had the opportunity to correct it.

Conclusion

This was a great project in which I learned a lot. Recovered so much knowledge from my days in Graphic Design during the mid 1990s, and also proved that Procreate is more than capable for producing print quality artwork, that had me so stressed when it was out to print and so relieved when I finally got it in my hands eight months later.

I am so eager to do another album cover. Band logos are also very interesting to me. Hopefully, the success of this album will necessitate a follow-up for I Will Take You Hunting. I’ve had day dreams of doing a picture disc, some type of animated Zoetrope type design. I had this idea in my head for a while and have just been shown an example that Blur has done, even Gorillaz have done one. Turns out it’s not such an original idea, but it must be fun to disgn one, they are truly mesmeric.