Spider-Lennon - How I got shit done
I'm writing this on what would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday and coincidentally I had started to put together a John Lennon inspired piece.
I'm a big fan of a Brazilian artist/illustrator named Butcher Billy, he creates images which mash up music personalities with comic book heroes - you can check out his work here , he's done various work incorporating Amy Winehouse with Wonder Woman, Ian Curtis (from Joy Division) as Batman and Morrisey as Superman to name but a few.
So with that in mind and after the Tommy Cooper picture I'd previously done I thought I'd give it a go. An instantly recognisable person and iconic shot would be needed and after much thought I came up with this.
Quite an iconic photo of John Lennon taken by Bob Gruen during his time in New York.
With the way my head works New York made me think of the City's resident web-slinger Spider-Man, I know Lennon wasn't American but for me it was link and it's my idea so there!
I figured that I could photoshop a peak of Spidey's costume under Lennon's jacket where his New York t-shirt would have been. So after some Photoshop and Illustrator jiggery pokery* we end up with this....
The above gives me more of an idea of the layers and various stencils I'll need and again the window and daylight came in handy with the tracing of the shapes.
With them cut it was then a case of spraying them individually onto the canvas I'd pre-painted with a grey-ish background as you can see.
When it came to the jacket detail I'd stayed with the blue as it was in the original photo just so everything wasn't too grey. But I thought I'd try and get a bit of texture in there with some layers of tape which I'd then spray over - don't ask me why I just felt like it
After some more spraying and a touch up here and there with some acrylic paint the overall outcome was not too bad. Not a patch on Butcher Billy and maybe not his exact style but something else altogether.
As always with this blog it's just an excuse for me to link to the stuff I have for sale, so check out the links on the right yeah?
*jiggery pokery is an easy technique used in Illustrator which my good friend, design whizz and overall Mod Legend Adam Clark taught me and I may get round to teaching you one day
