Been working on my cover design for the record. I'd started this digital painting around last March. Now that the record is nearing completion, I am firing up the computer and getting back to work on it. It's quite a project. As I've said before, I have no idea if this will be the finished cover, it depends how it comes out, and how the guys feel about it. All yesterday and today I've been working on illustrating stained glass wings. Working on really detailed eagle wing shapes made of church-like stained glass fragments. As with anything you see in your mind first, there is going to be an amount of trial and error to get there. It's definitely not at that point yet, but hopefully soon that element will be finished. There is still a massive amount of artwork to do after the wings are finished on the cover alone, but I'll just need to take it day by day. If you have to eat an elephant, you can only do it one bite at a time.

We begin mixing the record next week. Looks like we'll be splitting the work up between Ryan Williams and Chris Lord-Alge. Very excited to finally be putting the music through this last creative filter before setting the album in stone. I've been playing the music for a select group of friends, a homemade focus group of beta testers. Since I am so involved, it's really good to some fresh takes on the album as a whole, to gain some new perspective.

___

Listened to the 3rd part of the John Lennon Rolling Stone interview podcast last night. Highly recommended listening. The first two parts were really good, but this part is just so juicy. He slags off the other Beatles, talks frankly about drugs, people's misconceptions, and the band's cultural impact. Not that hearing Lennon rip on the other Beatles is great or anything, but his honesty is pretty fascinating overall. To hear it, just go search in iTunes podcasts.

Been listening to cellist Yo-Yo Ma's "Silk Road Ensemble" project's "Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon". It is somewhat of a world music concept record, where Ma collected a group of musicians from the countries bordering the "Silk Road" to make a collaborative musical project. The Silk Road is a network of trade routes that connect Asia with Europe and cross through a great many countries and cultures and rich musical traditions. The record is really fantastic working music. When I go into computer art mode, I can't really "get there" listing to rock or most lyrical music, it's gotta be floaty, atmospheric, mellow or classical. This might explain some of the more mellow selections in my recent "listening to" list.

Battlestar Galactica season two started up on Friday, and it was great, put all my fears about the show jumping the shark to rest for the moment. Really good start to the season.

Oh, almost forgot. How could I forget. Watched R.Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" chapters 1-12 DVD on Friday. Beyond saying that it was truly amazing, there's not much else I can say. Largely because when I think about "Trapped in the Closet" all motor skills completely shut down, and I mentally wander off into my "happy place".

update: the image above isn't the actual artwork, by the way, it's one of the reference pieces I am using. And to answer Michael C.'s question, I am using just Photoshop and Illustrator for the artwork.