A LOOK INTO THE CREATION OF SIX FEET UNDER’S UNDEAD ALBUM ART

As much as I appreciate, and love to analyze, great album art, I am myself a horrible visual artist. (Don’t believe me? Challenge me to a game of Draw Something. My user name is — wait for it — “Axl Rosenberg.”) It’s probably for this very reason that I love watching people who can draw, paint, etc., do their thing; it’s like watching a magic act to me.

So I found a new guest blog by Dusty Peterson over at Metal Band Art, about the creation of the album cover he did for Six Feet Under’s upcoming Undead, to be really, really fascinating.

Peterson doesn’t just give you a little bit of detail about the work that went into the making of this art; he really takes you through the entire process step-by-step, and includes a ton of his preliminary work, such as the first rough color sketch you see above. Here’s an excerpt about that very sketch:

“It’s more important to get the general vibe and composition down than details at this stage. Some labels/bands probably get frustrated at me, because this is the first thing they see and I’m sure they’d prefer a bit more information before making a decision for approval. But I just have to hope they trust that the details will turn out alright in the end.  As it turned out, people were pretty excited about this approach. We really wanted something that was old school, yet modern, and even at this early stage I think you can start to see that happening.”

Pretty great stuff.

You can read Peterson’s entire blog here. Six Feet Under’s Undead comes out May 22 via Metal Blade. The following month, the band goes on tour with Dying Fetus and Revocation; you can get dates here. And if you haven’t already, read our new interview with the SFU frontman Chris Barnes here (he also used to be in some band called Cannibal Corpse).

-AR