Song of Myself

Research and Brainstorm

You Got Me, The Roots + Erykah Badu + Eve

When brainstorming ways to illustrate this song, I thought of the album name, "Things Fall Apart," and the song's theme of loyalty with the fact that some relationships are bound to fall apart. These are two contrasting concepts that I wanted to integrate into my design. The broken window amidst the rainy weather accentuated the mood of the song, not because it was a sad song but rather because the sound of the rain had a rhythm that reminded me of the song. The second idea was a drum set with fragmented pieces of a person's face on broken glass. This design incorporated the rhythm of the drums into the song as well as the concept of things falling apart.

Better Things, A$AP Rocky

While the first song seemed to be telling a story, Better Things was more of a psychedelic song with many beat drops and wavering tempos. The song mentioned California nights which inspired me to include the palm trees which are what I associate California with. In the first image, the design can be described as what I feel in my head. The blobs and flowing composition emphasize the psychedelic nature of the song while the palm trees also remind me of the setting of the song. The second illustration represents how I sometimes wonder the process of making songs, which is why I have musical instruments and equipment in the room.

Development and Refinement

I chose to move on with You Got Me, but as seen from the first design, I included some designs that I used originally for Better Things. The difference was that there were posters of the album covers of Things Fall Apart by the Roots and it was raining outside.

I found it a bit difficult to color in the designs because I am more inclined to sketching and appreciating the pencil marks and shading. But coloring the designs did give me more of a visual of which design I should move on with and how I can make it so that each aspect of the design complements each other.

This was completely created using Adobe Fresco. There were parts such as the drums and the faces that I further refined by exporting the painting to Adobe Illustrator.

I used both Adobe Fresco and Adobe Illustrator to complete the project. Adobe Fresco is a digital painting application. After experimenting with it a bit, I decided it would be useful for creating the oil painting-esque design that I was looking for.

Using layers was useful for focusing on the different components of the piece. I took in a lot of suggestions that were given from the peer feedback session such as adding a drummer and including the broken glass effect on the other side to create a sense of balance.

Painting it on Fresco helped me refine certain parts on Illustrator because I could use the eyedropper tool to get the right shades and colors.

Final Piece

Design:

For this project, I chose to focus on the song “You Got Me” by the Roots.

While I brainstormed ideas that I wanted to illustrate in my work, I paid attention to the lyrics and how the song made me feel, along with remembering what my first impressions were of the song.
Two major factors that I really liked about the song were that it told a story about loyalty in relationships and the drums throughout the song were catchy. I wanted to capture these two aspects in my piece.
By combining Adobe Fresco and Adobe Illustrator, I managed to go forward with an oil painting-esque style with multiple small rectangles scattered around the painting.

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