Saturday, September 11, 2010

The Great Gatsby


This summer I was asked to do a cover for the Great Gatsby for Penguin U.K. The idea was to reference old playbills from the twenties or thirties. I started out with very detailed portraits of 'the players' drawn from images I found of film stars of the time (Daisy here is Bessie Love, Tom is William Haines, most of the others are composites), the idea being that the drawings would recall vignetted, engraved portraits, also typical of the time.



Ultimately the piece called for something more graphic and simplified. following are a few variations, the last being the final accepted piece.


1 comment:

k. beachy said...

this would seem to be the kind of thing you might mention to your novelist friend. maybe, say, when you're in a car for four hours, or around a camp fire, or sharing a tent.

but aside from that, man, awesome.