Original Cover Design
- Sleeve 017/100: Historian (2018)
- Studio Album by Lucy Dacus
- Label: Matador Records
- Genre: Indie Rock
- Original cover design by: Honestly, I don’t know, but based on this tweet, I’m assuming Lucy Dacus did it herself. I have to say I love the original cover as much as the music.
Sleeve #17 for my project #100albumsleeves .
I’ve been committed to this project for seventeen weeks now and I inevitably started to feel resistant to it.
Though I have shown up to the project every week, I’ve been procrastinating a lot and entertaining ideas of new projects (does anyone else have shiny object syndrome?🙃). I was OK while entertaining these new thoughts, they kept me distracted from feeling the surfacing discomfort I was now having with the project, but after I dropped them things started to get rough.
Last week, I could not meet my deadline, and this week I was feeling inadequate as an artist. I was in total disbelief I could create something. I was almost sure I was going to miss my deadline again and I started to freak out. I would listen to Lucy Dacus’s “The Shell“, a song about creative burnout, and I would cry ’cause I related to the song way too much 😭.
“You don’t wanna be a creator
Doesn’t mean you’ve got nothing to say”
The Shell – Lucy Dacus
I was feeling empty inside like I didn’t know what else to give, but somehow I was connecting to this album so much now. I was obsessed with it back in 2019, then I just thought it was clever and enjoyable. Now every lyric hit my bones (also crying with “Pillar of Truth“, a song about Lucy’s grandmother’s passing, as my own granma’s health is deteriorating 😭).
I started to have a flush of ideas for this album, but yet I wouldn’t work in it past tiny rough sketches. In the beginning, the project was all fun and joy, what could have happened now?
“Exactly what had to happen. This is why you’re doing 100 and not 10. So you get to feel uncomfortable and know yourself more.”
Katy Arrington (my art and life coach)
Digging deep I could say that I’ve been pressuring myself to create something “great” ever since I made cover #11 (Dream Theater’s Scenes from a Memory), it took other 5 covers to realize it. See, when the project started it was a blank slate, with no expectations whatsoever, and little knowledge on what other album cover artists existed out there.
The more I work on this project the more aware I am of everything I don’t know, and now I have a series of artworks, by myself, to compare with. How could I possibly lower my standards? this self-imposed pressure only paralyzes me. No wonder I was uninspired, I’m scared of making farts 💩 !!
Album Cover Redesign by franzmori. This is fan art, no copyright infringement intended.
Thanks to my coach I could regroup and remember that it is going to be OK. Nothing wrong is happening. She reminded me WHY I’m doing this, and how my deadline is there to help me survive my farts. Knowing that whatever I end up with by Thursday night is going to be OK calmed me, and I could enter a flow state for this new design.
Despite the rough patch, I’m absolutely in love with the result. It couldn’t have been any other way, it is exactly what it has to be. Talking about the design, I wanted to represent the emptiness I was feeling, that’s why I chose a silhouette. As lucy’s song says:
“It’s a myth and now I see it clearly
The Shell – Lucy Dacus
You don’t have to be sad to make something worth hearing “
In my case, I don’t have to be happy or confident to make something worth seeing. Also, I’m not an empty vessel, that’s a myth, so I filled the silhouette with flowers. For reasons I don’t know, I saw deep blue and red colors when listening to this album, so the color palette was something I chose early on. Red Poppy flowers, one of my favorites, seemed perfect to represent the album’s exploration of themes like life and death.
Besides the deep reflection, and coaching, I truly believe the music helped me get out of a rut. Thank you Lucy Dacus for creating this gem 🙏🏽.
If you can listen to it from beginning to end with good headphones, do so, you won’t regret it.
Would you like your own Album Cover design?
I’m available for commissions!
Listen to the art! I’ll be adding a new album each week to this Spotify playlist HERE.
To know more about my personal project and see the rest of the cover designs in this series, go HERE.