The Tarot-Concert-Poster

This was a really cool project I finished in August - but I promised to wait to post anything about it...

My client, Naomi, had seen the piece I had done for Emily Clement, the Life Coach -

- and she wanted to know if I could create a poster as a gift for her husband to celebrate their anniversary. She explained that they had been together for years before they finally got married. Their wedding had a music concert theme and was called "The At Last Tour".

I asked her to send me a list of things they liked, images, etc. And I did a lot of research into concert posters, but found very few that had more than one central figure, and nothing that felt very "wedding-ish". A Stevie Nicks poster got me thinking about record covers - and then an interesting Tori Amos cover with an art nouveau style, put the idea of tarot cards in my mind.

Naomi was really excited by that idea as she loves tarot and told me that her husband would be "The Hierophant" and she would be "The High Priestess".

I started sketching out the poster based on the classic tarot images, combining them into side-by-side images.

I designed the concert title and integrated the sports teams into the border. This is the quick sketch to show Naomi my idea:

The final pencil sketch had a row at the top and bottom with mini album covers for their favorite bands, as well as other passions (like their grandkids). Favorite hobbies, travel destinations and beverages were hidden throughout the image. I also connected the two tarot images by having Naomi and Alan both holding the scepter (with a G-clef on top!)

Once Naomi had approved the sketch and I had made a few requested changes - I inked the design at full-size (11'x17"):

Since this was meant as a gift, I painted the original piece with gouache (opaque watercolors), touched up the ink lines, and scanned the art as well.

Here is the final tarot concert poster!