andrew's blog gud

Materials: Colored pencil, charcoal, and pastel on large sketch pad. Process: I took a reference photo of myself holding a friend’s 3D-printed toy gun and sketched it on the page. After that I scribbled a chaotic background and darkened the area around the gun to make it slightly more three-dimensional. Ideas: To reflect the most brief song on the album, I decided to go with a simple look, focusing on capturing the song’s chaos. “Big Man with a Gun” is important because it is the character’s first embrace of violence before “A Warm Place”, his last glimpse of hope and a comforting moment before everything collapses.  

Materials: Colored pencil on a large sketch pad. Process: The images come from reference photos I took and drawings in my sketchbook. Much of this was drawn by using my sketchbook and piece on my window, working as a light table. Ideas: The song “The Becoming” is about the main character being (at least emotionally) transformed into a machine. I tried to portray the contrast between human and machine, especially as the main character feels he is ripped apart as he is being replaced with mechanical parts. A few lyrics incorporated into the piece are “made up of wires”, “covered with scabs”, “I could try to get away / But I strap myself in”, and “...this noise inside my head”. The song uses a 13/8 time signature, which I visually reflected by dividing the piece into 13 sections (including the corners) with 8 lines.

 Materials: Drawn on a large sketch pad using colored pencil. Process: The person and hands are based on reference pictures I took of myself. I drew a few hands in my sketchbook based on my reference pictures and drew over these sketches many times to get a crowd. For the text I printed out the text on a piece of computer paper, drawing over this on graphite paper on top of what would become the final piece. Ideas: I tried to reflect the ideas of the song, which are about mob mentality and consumerism. The main character feels lost in a world where the people around him exploit him in a world seemingly built off of materialism, greed, and eternal unfulfillment. The composition of this piece is based on the line in the song, “Take the skin and peel it back, / now doesn’t it make you feel better?” In the context of the song he is hurting himself but in this piece it shows that from his point of view it is the madness of the crowds and the hollowness inspired by materialism that causes hi

 Materials: Done on a large sketch pad with black colored pencil. Process: The person is based on a reference photo I took of myself. Most time on this piece was spent drawing each insect. Ideas: Since “Piggy” has some of the most abstract lyrics of the album, I tried to focus the piece on the sonic and emotional aspects of the song. The song is simple compositionally, so I tried to make the piece understated and simple. The song is about the character detaching themselves from reality and the song itself uses white noise in the chorus to reflect this (this is all my interpretation). To have the same effect, I reincorporated the idea of insects from the last piece, but this time they form a wall of visual white noise.

 Materials: Drawn on a large drawing pad with colored pencils with paint splattered on top. Process: After drawing the mouth, I scribbled the background with colored pencils and drew the insects flying out. After that we covered the mouth by taping paper over it and splattered red paint over the piece by flicking a brush dipped in the paint. Ideas: This piece corresponds to the first track on the album, which is written as the voice in the main character’s head speaking to him. The mouth in the piece represents this voice, with the insects representing the negative emotions and desires the voice inspires (these insects recur in my art and are inspired by some tracks at the end of the album which sonically and once lyrically reference insects). This piece attempts to reflect the song sonically by conveying chaotic movement.

Materials: Drawn with pencil in my sketchbook. Processes: This was done as an extended brainstorming session which allowed me to plan out what each piece will look like. Each box represents a song on the album and the ones where I did not have an idea are left blank. Ideas: This page is how I figured out how I would tell the very loose narrative of the album; like the lyrics, the art revolves around one character, but his surroundings are abstract and based in emotion rather than literal reality. This page also helped me establish some recurring ideas for the album; insects are incorporated into many of the pieces, the menacing mouth in the first piece contrasts with a later more comforting  piece that will resemble an eye, the main character’s eyes are crossed out to represent loss of identity and derealizarion, etc. The narrative of the album portrays a tortured and mentally ill protagonist falling into complete madness.

Materials: I made this in my sketchbook gluing my own drawings next to famous works of art I printed. My art was made with colored pencil and the writing was written in sharpie. Process: I used this as a brainstorming session for any immediate images that inspired me, which I drew and found similarities with more famous works of art. I glued my drawings in my sketchbook next to pictures of the inspirational pieces. Ideas: Because I want my art in this concentration to reflect the concept album “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails, I had to have some sense of what aesthetics, textures, themes, and ideas I will be exploring that will complement the album. This page allowed me to do that, and the ideas are written in the image itself.