I knew I waned to do something illustrative. Something whimsical that captured the idea and sounds of the song. I began by roughly sketching out a dream doodle using the rim of Lennon's glasses as a base. it is no obvious enough to count as a full portrait, but the shape is so strongly associated with him, I felt is grounded the image enough for it to be recognisable.
From here it was just the tracing process with digitally with my tablet. Altering small shapes As I went. I find this process very therapeutic. The shapes and colours were taken from old Beatles albums and the overall aesthetic of the 70s. The simplicity of Imagine would only call for a lot of blue and a couple of clouds, instead I wanted to capture more than just the song, but everything surrounding it, the time, the style the politics and i'll aim to do that through the medium of colour and other design elements. I added iconic shapes including the CND logo to reference the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that was still raw in audiences minds, having the final agreement for a treaty to halt the spread of nuclear weapons was only reached 3 years prior to the release of this album. Additionally its connotations with the ongoing Vietnam way of which Lennon took a very active role in trying to persuade people to protest against the Vietnam War, as did other musicians at the time. The war didn't finish for another 4 years.
Below is the ongoing process of tracing the original sketch.
The process was very satisfying. Changing between freehand and the straight lines gives the illustration great dimensions. At this stage my plan is to scale this down very small, so at this rate I like how the intricacies will look on an even smaller scale.
