CHRIS STAPLETON: LIVE IN RIDGEFIELD, WA
You may have seen me say it for other projects on this website, but for me one of the most fun challenges to tackle as an illustrator is designing a concert poster for an artist for the first time. It’s like meeting someone you’ve heard about face to face for the first time. I’ve heard the music, I know of the guy, but when I got to draw a poster for Chris Stapleton’s show in Ridgefield, Washington, it was like having that first real conversation.
I take a few different routes when conceptualizing posters, and for this one I went the route of basing the illustration on the location of the show. Sometimes it’s based on the artists new record, where they’re from, the genre of music, but I took the opportunity to draw a landscape and animal I don’t get the pleasure of seeing in my neck of the woods.
The mountain featured in the background is of course Mount St. Helens, which infamously erupted in 1980 and forever changed the landscape. I drew the poster based on pre-eruption photographs, before the eruption blew off the top ~400 metres of the volcano. I fell in a bit of a rabbit hole during the research phase of the design process.
I fell into quite the rabbit hole while doing research for this poster. This process of deconstructing and artistically interpreting something that makes illustration work such a joy, and I always hope the work I make supplements the experience of the concert, book, magazine, etc and makes it that much more special and memorable.
Some signed artist proofs may still be available in my online shop! Head there now to check it out.