After being inspired by a “lowbrow art” sticker we found (which came from a cereal box long, long ago), we wanted to have the album art for “Wigs & Liquor” reflect that vibe. I wanted to have a devil girl on the cover, and I thought it would be cool if she was sitting in some kind of dressing room, maybe at a make-up table with a mirror. And there could be booze bottles and wigs all over the place.

Initially I thought it made sense to have the devil girl facing the mirror. I did some quick sketches and thumbnails to see if it would fly. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.

I liked the idea of seeing her face in the mirror, but it seemed a little weird to have the cover dominated mostly by her back. I guess it still would have worked, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me. Maybe it was the spine…

The other elements, though, seemed cool: the makeup table with the lighted mirror, wigs hanging around, and a bunch of bottles on the table top.

Knowing what I wanted to change, I assembled a quick and dirty photo collage to get a feel for the idea and try out some colors and textures (that’s the image we posted a while ago). For a rough idea it turned out pretty well. So well, in fact, that at one point Mike wanted to just use that image.

The rough idea, especially as a photo collage, wasn’t capturing that lowbrow vibe that I wanted. The colors were all wrong, and in my mind it had to be more of an illustration. Anybody can slap a cover together in Photoshop (CD memes, anyone?), but it takes some effort to actually create a drawing by hand.

A lot of effort. Maybe too much effort.

To be concluded…