Category Archives: kmfdm art

KMFDM – PARADISE: Sketches and final art.

Final artwork. Inked by hand and colored in Adobe Illustrator

For the their new album, Paradise, KMFDM supremo, Sasha Konietsko, wanted an artwork that would inspire hope in a world torn apart by tribal rivalries and hatred. As both of us are family men, it seemed appropriate to create an image that would illustrate our state of mind concerning the future of our children and immediately this post-apocalyptic scene popped into my head. Hold them close, teach them well and maybe their generation can accomplish that which we did not.

Sketch one based on an idea by Sascha Konietsko. I originally saw it as a Mad Max-meets-Social Realism propaganda piece but, as the backstory to the scenario grew in my mind, I could see it becoming something more meaningful.
Secondary sketch. Still with the message of hope I wished to create fresh in my mind, I replaced the corny heroism for a quieter dynamic and tried to capture the relationship between father and daughter.
Third sketch. I decided to use a reverse symmetrical angle of the father and daughter to indicate the connection between this scenario and my earlier artwork for KMFDM’s Salvation album in which a young warrior rescues an unconscious woman from the ruins of a destroyed city.
In this initial pencil sketch, the main character had a bow, a knife and a pistol. These were all subsequently removed when Sascha and I agreed that they should be entering the future without weapons.
One of a series of alternative colour and background combinations. The sky in this version was considered too busy and replaced in the final illustration by a huge sun.
This image from the album, Salvation, ties in with the one from the Paradise cover in that the woman the young warrior rescues from the ruined city is the mother of his daughter in the new illustration

Restored KMFDM cover artworks

Over the last couple of months, I have been assembling images for inclusion in the forthcoming BRUTE! art book and I’ve been quite surprised at how difficult it’s been locating hi-resolution copies of my work from the 80s and 90s (much of it lost to corrupt back-up discs etc.). Of those I was able to source, several files had to be extensively repaired, many of the album covers from that period requiring major re-rendering to make them usable for publication.
There is still much restoration work to be done before the book goes to print next year but am now able to offer BRUTE! fans the chance to get their hands on one of these glorious vector-rendered versions, available as signed canvas prints. For details on how to order yours, please PM me here or order yours direct from the blog shop.
http://joef27.sg-host.com/?wpsc_product_category=prints-categories&paged=4

crash
Vector-rendered perfection: CRASH! (Adios)
BtruteBRONZE copy
Brute

 

DBYT
Don’t Blow Your Top

 

 

 

 

 

 

Naive
Naive
Split
Split

 

KMFDM 2013 promo poster

KMFDM TOUR POSTER (War Bus)

As part of their promotional campaign for their upcoming tour, industrial group KMFDM commissioned me to come up with something appropriate.

Inspired by WW1 armoured mini tanks and modern anti-riot vehicles, I set about creating a hybrid more suited to the band’s image than the traditional tour bus. After creating a collage of elements in Photoshop, I then warped and re-shaped the chassis before re-drawing the finished product in ink. Final artwork layers composed in Illustrator.

‘Kunst’,

In support of the Femen/Pussy Riot protestors, I created a suitably forceful chainsaw-wielding amazon for the front cover of the new KMFDM album, ‘Kunst’.

Since their incarceration for various anti-Putin stunts and protests, international support for the women of the movement has grown exponentially, mostly due to their bare-chested style of defiance.

(see Femen cross-felling video here: femen-cross-pussy-riot-930

Facebook have removed the image the band’s page.

New BRUTE! illustration for KMFDM’s KRANK

click to enlarge

For KMFDM‘s 2011 US tour, I was commissioned to create my own interpretation of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, using band front man and industrial legend, Sascha Konietsko, as inspiration for the main figure.

The illustration was subsequently used on a range of merchandise currently accompanying the band across the U.S. of A.

Media: Sharpie, Japanese calligraphic brush pen, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator.