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THE FOREST
The Forest is an atmospheric goth dark wave band created by my friends in high school. Five years later, the girl group still performs occasionally at DJ sets and at small local stages. After seeing my fine art, they asked me to create an album cover for their first album, Ocean Erotica, which inspired me to continue with their concept and create further albums reflecting their sound spanning from 2019 to present. With their permission and input, I created 3 more album covers that reflected their dark, atmospheric, and slightly feminine sound.
SILENCE
The Forest's initial sound was inspired by goth bands like The Cure, where themes of death, romance, and macabre beauty met with their own experience and sound. Based on my own memory of their music from back in high school, I immediately felt this painting I created reflected some of the themes of life and death in their music.
The final album cover combines this oil painting background with minimal digital alterations like the text, black background, and orange frame. I wanted to emphasize the femininity of the band with a more delicate serif font, and add a vintage book/album feel with the frame, which is a common element in many older album covers.
CREATION
The second album title highlights the vast amount of music and inspiration that flowed out of the band during the pandemic. Because almost all other activity ceased, this was the period in which The Forest created the most music, inspiring the dense, busy pattern for their second hypothetical album cover.
To create this dark lacy texture, I experimented with adobe illustrator's pattern creation capabilities, which generated the top-most black/white image. I then traced over the pattern in photoshop to add a more sketchy, rough texture that better reflected The Forest's unpolished sound at the time.
NOTES FROM THE ROAD
Their third album cover reflects the stage of change we all felt after covid receded, and we all entered our busy college lives. As the members of The Forest advanced through college, the pressures of trying to reach academic and career goals could definitely be heard in their longing sound, especially as the time they could dedicate to making music dwindled.
The original painting was done to reflect my own feelings about the job market and the constant pressure to succeed an unreachable goal. Thus, I felt it was perfect to incorporate into The Forest's 3rd hypothetical album cover, as it perfectly encapsulated the member's apprehensions as well.
OCEAN EROTICA
Ocean erotica is The Forest's first album, and is a compilation of all the music they've made over the years, excluding covers. An important aspect to their music is the femininity within their dark wave sound and romantic lyrics, which they feel is closely tied to the erotic and feminine energy of the ocean.
I felt this painting was perfect for their first album cover, as it encompasses so many elements of their music into one image. Not only does it reflect the themes of death, but the open mouth of the subject also has slight erotic insinuations. I also used photoshop to wrap the text along the fins of the fish to further emphasize the flowing nature of their music and ocean waves.
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