Ancient Vision is - in my opinion - a talented band from Kansas USA making music in the vein of Jethro Tull, but with probably more of a progrock feeling than folk. Tom May, the main writer of the band told me the artwork I've provided for their second album "Focus Or Blinders" fitted with his vision of what he wanted for the album cover exactly. Based on that he's asked me to do the illustration for the upcoming third album as well.
Pen & ink drawing made for the CD print, also used on the inside of the booklet.
Sketch for the new album - Tom sent me a very rough sketch of the concept he was thinking of. I worked out the idea to this sketch. The idea was to show the progress man has made coming from the cave to the castle to the condeminium. This was then to be worked out in my style. I decided to add some reference to the previous album cover with the cliff bridge in the background.
The final color illustration for the front cover.
Halfway through the painting of the front cover I got the idea to have the backcover be a nightversion of the frontcover. Instead of creating a new painting, the "day" piece was digitally photographed and then altered using Photoshop to create the "night" piece. After having done this, it was emailed in low resolution to Tom to see what the band thought of the idea. I envisioned this image to be used mirrored to the "day" image and be one image for front and back cover.
This is the final image for the front and backcover. It almost starts to look like some kind of creature rising up out of the water. I kept the light in the cave as it shows better that it is a cave and not a black hole in the rocks. You could also say man is still in many ways a caveman and even though we have "progressed", there's still a lot of unprogressed and we still react the same way the caveman would, violent and without thought. I'm not sure Tom is in with this idea, but that's okay. Everyone can see what they want in my paintings and if another story is made up by someone else, it's as valid as mine.
Unfortunately, after the images were sent the project seems to "float". I still haven't heard anything back from the band, if there still is...
All images © 1985-2008: All rights reserved by Mario Baert.
Any reproduction or distribution of the artwork presented here without the prior consent of the artist is strictly prohibited.
Any reproduction or distribution of the artwork presented here without the prior consent of the artist is strictly prohibited.
