Poster a Day Spotlight - #16 Jay Rock, The Bloodiest.

Jay Rock - Redemption // Reference Image

This is the first of my ‘spotlight’ series focusing on one particular poster from my collection of ‘Poster a Day’ designs.

Having listened to Jay Rock’s newest album ‘Redemption’ a lot over the last few weeks I wanted to incorporate him into some form of poster illustration. Looking across the track-list the album I was interested by the opening track, ‘The bloodiest’ and the imagery that could come from this. I began looking at the visuals that Rock himself has already produced to accompany the various songs on the album, all are very stylish and dark, using subtle effects to create a contrast between the environments on display and the message Rock is presenting with the music itself.

From this, I wanted this contrast to be the key focus of the poster and started to explore different ways in which I could present this purely visually. I chose to look at contrast in colour and, inspired by the title of the opening track, I wanted blood to be the focal point of this contrast. I chose to illustrate the poster as opposed to the previous use of only photos in other iterations of the series so far. Due to time constraints this is usually the case but here I opted for a much simpler style of illustration based around mostly line work using a rough brush that was intended to compliment the dusty texture used on the poster. The colours on the illustration are most in dark, block colours with very subtle shadows and highlights.

I chose to look at contrast in colour and, inspired by the title of the opening track, I wanted blood to be the focal point of this contrast.

The body position and pose on the poster is largely inspired by Rock on the cover of the album however I felt using darker colours would be amplify the contrast i wanted and therefore I had him wearing much darker clothes. Having Rock stand in a puddle of blood is not only a strong image, it allows this large red block of colour to dominate the centre of the poster, being the only colour in a sea of monotone. I enjoyed experimenting with this less detailed style of illustration and felt it did not necessarily sacrifice anything in comparison to the more realistic portraits that I have worked on in the past. This is reflected well on social media with this poster proving more popular than other illustration based posts I have experimented with in the past.