Big Black Delta

Big Black Delta, the solo project of former Mellowdrone frontman Jonathan Bates, continues to be one of my favorite new acts of recent times... so of course I had to do a Big Black Delta poster. This one is pretty straightforward: as with all of my work as of late, I wanted to create a graphite portrait, in this case of Bates, which felt especially appropriate since he alone is the grand architect behind all BBD music. Playing into the UFO lore and Space themes that Bates is so inspired by, I essentially layered the original illustration/portrait with a telescopic photo of a nebula. It was a simple solution, but seemingly the best one since it (hopefully) conveys the idea that all of this music is bursting and radiating from one person's brain. The more abstract background embellishments that surround Bates on the original drawing were directly inspired by the incredible work of Caspar Newbolt & Version Industries who have thus far done all the official artwork for Big Black Delta.

Thumbnails

Raw scan of the graphite illustration

Final image