Venus Throw

About a decade back, my friend Bruce Smith was recording a record with his noir-a-billy band The Venus Throw, and kindly asked me to create the art and design the CD package. I jumped in with both feet and came up with the following image. Not bad, but kinda pedestrian, I'll admit. Frankly, this is where my skills were at the time.

Now fast forward a bit to early 2007...Bruce had a new Venus Throw album in the works, and again asked me to make it all pretty. Instead of a jewel case, he'd be going with a cardboard digipak this time....which meant if I wanted, I could design and illustrate nearly every inch of the thing. Running with the title, "Raised Right, Gone Wrong", my idea for the cover was a girl in a school uniform, sitting in the backseat of a car with her blouse unbuttoned and drinking a tallboy. To make it a little less creepy, though, I thought I'd have a centerspread on the inside of the CD where she's getting ready for a "date", and several "costumes", including the schoolgirl outfit, are hanging in the closet.  I took a few reference photos of my friend Catherine's 1963 Ford Falcon, and did a bunch of sketches right away:

As sometimes happens, life got in the way and the project ended up geting shelved until earlier this year...Bruce finished recording back in the spring, and I didn't end up finishing the art until a few weeks back, over three years since I began! I got my copies of the CD yesterday, and I must say, the package looks pretty great. I have some quibbles about the job I did, as always, but it's great to have such a complete piece of work...and the music's pretty goddamn great too!