I am thrilled to share images from the cover art I created for the Swedish band ‘ Men On The Border’

They created an album a few years ago and asked me to create the cover, and recently they decided to give the album a vinyl release.

I wanted to focus on making the artwork simple but arresting, and using linocut was a great way to achieve this.

I worked on a selection of designs and colourways and this process went back and forwards between myself and the band members before we eventually agreed on the final design

you can see a few of these designs below…….

The finished design is a single image, but it is made up from several separate print blocks that are inked and applied one after the other to make the final design.

The patterns are carved into a lino sheet with cutters in relief so whatever is NOT carved away will end up as coloured image when ink is applied to the sheet.
You can see the three lino sheets below.

The lino sheets used to create the artwork

The different sheets are inked with different colours and then applied to the paper one at a time, but EACH LAYER needs to totally dry before the next colour can be applied.
The ink is oil based so takes several days to dry.

This means that is more than a week to make the full print.

When the print is complete I added gold leaf layers to the Blackbirds beak.

The finished album is a wonderful limited edition vinyl set on orange vinyl.
The main seeve is black and the orange vinyl symbolises the Blackbirds beak poking out of the black body

you can buy the album from this link
http://www.menontheborder.com/news

Thanks to the Men On The Border for giving me the opportunity to be a part of their project.

UPDATE
February 2021
You can now stream the album on Spotify
CLICK BELOW
http://www.menontheborder.com/sound-vision