The Minnesota Opera Project

A while back I had the good fortune to work with the very talented graphic designer Amy Kirkpatrick of Kirkpatrick Design on concepts for the one of Amy's many clients, the Minnesota Opera. Amy thought my collage style of illustration might be a good choice for the upcoming season's brochure and marketing materials, and invited me to submit concepts for consideration. I worked on two of the season's upcoming operas, the well-loved classic, "Madame Butterfly" and "Silent Night", a world premiere libretto based on the true story of the World War I Christmas Eve truce in the trenches of the western front.

In the end, the Opera folks opted to go with photography instead of collage and my fun came to an end, but I really had a good time working with Amy on the preliminary concepts. Speaking of which:


I began with this photo of Kelly Kaduce of Madame Butterfly. With a little Photoshop magic, I reduced those worried lines in her forehead, (if only I could do that with myself) and I reduced the blue hue.


before


and after

Next I took out my scissors and found my glue stick and created some rough thumbnails with a cut and paste routine. Here's what I sent to Amy, and she decided to go with the last version, which will show in my next post: