By Makai Perkins
Sly & The Family Stone: Wishful Thinkin’ Tour
I started with a picture of sly that I wanted to be the centerpiece. I wanted to find a psychedelic direction because that’s Sly’s era through the 60s and 70s. I put some effects on him to make him look backlit. Then I found a landscape and duplicated and flipped it, then blended the two. I then put a black and white filter on the whole thing.
This is where I played around with a lot of text. I happened to find that space right around his left shoulder to make him and the text look grand. Then I fooled around a lot with where to put the name of the tour and ended up putting it at the bottom with a little blue rectangle to grab the eye.
Aretha Franklin: Natural Woman Tour
For this one, I took a picture of Aretha and put her over a grey background, then made the concentric silhouette of a black woman with an afro. I put some effects on the layers to generate some cool colors for a color scheme. I then played around with the typography and made the natural woman text graphic.
Then I found some script to write her name and messed around with some layer effects on the whole piece to make it look a little more aged. I then messed around with some brushes to fill some space. I started making this just after Black History Month and in Women’s History Month, so I wanted to put more representation of black women in this piece.
Peter Tosh: Igziabeher Tour
For this one, I wanted to have the vibrant Rastafari colors and shoved that to the forefront because it is the Igziabeher tour. I also sectioned the work into four areas so I could use my space the best. I put Peter Tosh in the bottom left and wanted him to be big, so everyone knew who he was, and then I put the tour name above him and the tour dates next to him. Then I put Ethiopia in the white space in the top right corner with the lion of Judah in it. This is just a place for the eyes to rest.
Erykah Badu: Pack Light Tour
I started this one with a lot of luggage/suitcases because I was listening to “Bag Lady” off of my favorite album of hers ‘Mamas Gun.’ Then I tried to find ways to incorporate Erykah into the piece, so I found a good picture of her and started to play around with editing. I ended up duplicating her a couple of times and using different layer effects to get this Picasso-esc effect on her face. Then I wanted to hint at or pay homage to the legendary album, so I figured I would use the unmistakable Mamas Gun colors.
Then I got some big flowy text where I wrote her name and some other exciting text that I put at the bottom for the tour name. Then I made some luggage tags where I overlaid a rough paper texture and put the city/airport abbreviations of the tour locations. And I put them on the side, trying to make them look like they are hanging off some of the bags.
YR Raw 