Eras of Shirely Manson
The band Garbage is a prolific 4-piece alternate rock project formed in the 90's that has become an institution, a powerhouse in production transcending genre and medium. Garbage has, however, remained as simple and vulnerable as they were at the very beginning. Although each band member contributes equally, Shirley Manson is their image. She has carried them through each distinct musical era as a visual vector for their sound. I decided to design a series of busts based off of how she looked during the release of each album combined with the influence of the album cover itself. Created in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
The Challenge
When planning a visually cohesive set of drawings based on a single template, the hard part becomes creating a set of rules to follow with each drawing and tweaking them all as challenges to those rules arise. There was added difficulty designing each figure to be accurate to some iconic outfits and hairstyles that Shirley Manson rocked at the time, while incorporating the design and colors of the album cover into her look. A behemoth task with lots of little rules.
Image Descriptions
First: Screenshot of post on the artist-run Facebook account. It was also posted on their Instagram and Twitter accounts, with each of my art pages tagged. This exposure lead to selling 100's of prints, stickers, and t-shirts with this design.
Second: "Version 2.0" 1998 era Shirley, along with the cover and outfits that inspired the look. This one takes inspiration from a real jacket she wore while touring that resembled the cover of their Sophomore album.
Third: "Not Your Kind of People" 2012 era Shirley, along with the cover and outfits that inspired the look. This one takes inspiration from a uniqe hair piece she wore during that period while sporting mostly up do's.
Fourth: The cover for Garbage's new 2021 album, "No Gods No Masters". I lost the original file for this illustration when my old computer crashed unexpectedly and I'm working on recreating it so I can add this album (and hopefully more) to the collection.
Fifth: The original sketch for this illustration. After completing it, I scanned and printed out dozens of copies to play around with outfits and hairstyles until I had six semi-finished sketches. No matter the final medium, I always plan and work traditionally until I am ready to start rendering.