A Surrealist piece inspired by songs “Garden Grove” and “Lou Dog Went to the Moon” by the legendary, Longbeach, CA band: Sublime. Contained within this piece are the lyrics, “If you only knew, all the love that I found, It's hard to keep my Soul on the Ground”.
The band Sublime created their own genre of beach music with Reggae, Ska, Hip Hop & Punk rock vibes, I set the tone for this project by a beach with an oversized moon. Familiar with a concept song of theirs, “Lou Dog Went to the Moon”, I have Lou Dog heading off to the moon on a rocket jet-powered surfboard.
I wanted to create this piece using both hand drawing techniques (stylus on screen) and photo manipulation. Setting the two in the same world without too much contrast was pivotal. Deciding what would be illustration and what would be imagery of photo took some thought process
I have the view from another planet or heavenly place, looking back at earth. The moon is set in the Ocean with realistic use of elements throughout the landscape (reflections in the water) merged with objects in an ‘altered-reality’ state.
Sublime does have their own artwork style and so I wanted to give this a slightly “real-world” look to separate mine from the Cartoon direction of Sublime’s previous art works. To add elements from the band I combed the net for images and looked through what is used in their artwork, as to have recognition that my piece is influenced directly by the band and their lyrics.
Sublime does have their own artwork style and so I wanted to give this a slightly “real-world” look to separate mine from the Cartoon direction of Sublime’s previous art works. To add elements from the band I combed the net for images and looked through what is used in their artwork, as to have recognition that my piece is influenced directly by the band and their lyrics.
A lot of masking was used in this project. I altered separate images in this and illustrated much of it to mix real life imagery and my drawing style in a cohesive manner.
I wanted this piece to be surrealist, but realistic looking enough to have the viewer searching for what parts are photo and which are my illustrations.
This project was created entirely in Adobe Photoshop.
LOU DOG WENT TO THE MOON - SUBLIME
