Three Serpents – Album Art

The Barega Saxophone Quartet‘s debut album, Three Serpents, is a beautiful and varied work, rich with inspiration for illustration. It was my pleasure to create a digital booklet for their release. I put together five collaged panels, each inspired by a different piece on the album, tied together by the themes of renewal, fertility, the interconnected and cyclical nature of life and the moon. These ideas sprung mainly from the three serpents of the title piece, Hydra, Coatlicue and especially Ouroboros. The panels feature overlapping elements and, to further the circularity concept, the final panel overlaps with the first to make a loop. The ‘Gossamer Thread’ begins with the title and loops it’s way through each panel to be messily knotted in the last one, ‘Simpler Times’.

Each piece in the collage is either textured paper or watercolour paper coloured by hand with gouche, watercolour and coloured pencils. I created the title lettering, text layout and design digitally

As a musician as well as an illustrator, collaboration between music and visual art are of great interest to me. This is only my second album art design but I hope to do a lot more in this field in the future.

Do yourself a favour and buy the album at their bandcamp: baregasaxquartet.bandcamp.com/releases

If you haven’t listened to any woodwind ensembles before, or are not really into ‘classical’ music, I think that you will be surprised by how much you like this album. The pieces are contemporary, exciting and really moving. And the sound…mwah! So lush and enveloping. Give it a try!

Update: The group commissioned me to do the artwork for their second album, Abandon Control.