Puttiki poster

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.