Long time no posting, I've been busy being a teacher here in Thailand but over our extensive school holidays I completed the poster for the "Return of Puttiki" art-show and cocktail bender.
I started with a vague idea about mixing actual props and models with vintage photography in a mens adventure magazine/exploitation film poster style. Sam from Puttiki had mentioned he would like a Moai on the poster somewhere so I started to build a cardboard Maoi head.
Rough outlines...
....nose and mouth..
..and ears..
..and almost a perfect fit, but no eye holes so not suitable for wearing while operating a motorbike. Not that would stop anyone here in Thailand where ten on a moped and the raffia bike helmet rule.
Adding more shape with newspaper..
..face completed and hat stone hat added. I tried to get a stone effect with wads of glue soaked toilet paper, but it failed to dry in a pleasing style, so I just went with a normal coat of newspaper.
Coat of house hold emulsion as a base coat for painting..
..undercoat of faux wood grain..
..then the details in bold black paint. Now that the head was finished I had to work out the final composition, I found a picture of Betty Page in distress and planned to have the Moai man added to the picture in a suitably menacing pose.
I dressed my self and had the missus take some scary pictures of me...
..the pictures worked out well but the Betty Page picture was not of a high enough resolution for the project. So I searched through my exploitation poster folders and decided to try a single figure design.
Then with a days worth of photoshop jiggery pokery and I ended up with this..
I used design elements (aka nicked bits) from this vintage tiki menu, it was challenging to replicate on the computer the old hand drawn screen print.
Then I sent of the image to Sam who added some final fantastic touches to make the finished flyer. I think it worked out rather well..jpg)
