Holy Grail Gig Poster 2011

Holy Grail Gig Poster - The Troc - 2011

I had a friend who turned me on to Holy Grail a few months ago, and the band is pretty damn good! A really solid thrash-metal outfit with some modern turns as well as some power metal twists. Their EP was awesome, filled with covers and cover art by none other than Ed Repka!

I heard they were coming to Philly, and not only that, but it was only $10 to go to the show!

Now, in the past, I go all-out doing promo for metal bands that come to Philly whenever I get the chance. I had the pencils for this poster started April 29th, the inks and base colors done April 30th, and I didn't have something I was happy with until May 1st.

The show was May 3rd.

I spent May 2nd at work and accidentally slept in. I missed my chance to help them out over the weekend, and I was bummed. I'm writing this the day before the show. I don't know if I'll even make it, and I hope the show goes great! If the guys in the band read this, know that you KICK ASS and next time you come around I've got one hell of a poster waiting for you!!!

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I sketched out the poster idea about a week before I decided to work on a finish. It wasn't a very developed concept; a woman with snakes. I always like trying to add more and more to a piece like that, and I decided to do an ode to Leviathan.

At the same time, I was looking more and more at the work of my contemporaries, especially Godmachine. His work is consistently amazing, and I wanted to try something in the style he did that seems to be, in fact, the modern illustration style (my opinion, and nothing more). That said, my apologies if its too close!

I'm pretty happy with the result. I worked on it originally as a t-shirt design that I was going to turn into a poster, but I kept running into the same problem; I didn't like how colorful it was, especially on the poster. The original has a LOT of green, and on a whim I decided to make everything red. It worked great for the poster, and so you have this.

A lot of blood, sweat, and annoyance went into this piece. The woman's head was a nightmare to draw, and it's my biggest weakness. I love drawing women's heads, but I suck at drawing them looking up. I think I got it this time.

NOTE: To keep it on DeviantArt without a warning, I actually censored a nipple. I kidna like it better that way...