In the summer of Twenty Seventeen I was approached by Kable House Presents to illustrate a show poster for their upcoming show featuring Banditos. Kable House Presents is described as "an independent, volunteer-driven initiative that showcases national touring acts in an intimate, listening-room environment." The band I would be making the poster for is described thusly "Originally from Birmingham, AL, Banditos is a group - more like a gang, actually - of six 20-somethings, nowadays operating out of Nashville, close to, and simultaneously very far away from, the gleaming towers and industry hustle of Lower Broad and Music Row." With this information in mind, and knowing that the poster itself would be screen printed by another local artist, I started doing some research into the band itself, along with research into other unique show posters.
Part of my research was listening to the band a lot, which was easy because this kind of music is my jam, and from listening to them a lot I noticed the jackalopes on the wall in the back of the cover art and decided that was the thing I wanted to feature on my poster. So I sketched out my initial idea loosely to show the client, which they dug, so I moved to the full ink process. At this point, any illustration I did was still done the old fashioned way with paper and pen.
From that point, I worked with the screen printer to best think through the way to do the colors, as we were working with a limited palette of green and white ink, along with the tone of the brown paper we were using. Once we worked out the details, I sent over the files and waited for the final printed pieces. The best part of getting a copy of the poster for myself was I got to go check out the show to pick one up. Overall, I loved the experience of producing a limited run poster like this, and I know it's influenced my decision to seek out more clients and projects like this over the years.
