Sandancer EP

After several client discussions and a lot of input from the musician, it was decided to included characters in the artwork that were inspired by the people some of the songs were based on. The main song - named after the album - was taken from the colloquial term of the same name which is used to describe someone from South Shields a coastal town in the north of the UK. This is used to describe the person whom the song is about. Due to the personal nature of the album, it was clear that the artwork needed to be hand-drawn with minor digital edits to properly capture the intimate and sentimental nature of the songs and their subject matter. Having it be predominantly handmade lent it a realistic and personalized touch.

A sunset beach scene was chosen to capture the sentimental feeling, simultaneously serving as a nod to the ‘sand dancer’ origins. The final artwork was a multimedia piece made up of colour pencils, soft pastels, oil pastels and watercolours, all merged digitally. All characters were drawn by hand and coloured in with colour pencils. Each section of the beach scenery was composed using a different material to capture the texture of each element. The sky was made using soft pastels, the water was created with watercolours and to finish it off, the rougher sand and the beach grasses were done with oil pastels to produce a gritty textured feel.

The colour palette was pretty simple to compose, considering the art was based off a beach-side sunset, which meant a lot of blue-green hues that were balanced out by yellows and oranges, even merged at points to create soft peaches and rose pinks to really encapsulate the sky at sunset. The selected colours helped convey the nostalgic tone we were going for.

Characters were based off of two tracks on the album: ‘Sandancer’ and ‘Babysteps’, being the woman and the family resepctively. The seagulls were added to provide a more coastal feel and deeper symbology.