Illustration: Blue Moon

Continuing my theme of Coles Phillips inspired fadeaway girls inspired by standard song titles for Colour Collective. This week the colour was Payne's Grey - rather more blue than grey really, and therefore a perfect opportunity to do an illustration based on the song Blue Moon by Rogers and Hart. 

Blue Moon

You saw me standing alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

Blue moon

You knew just what I was there fore

You heard me saying a prayer for

Someone I really could care for

And then there suddenly appeared before me

The only one my arms will ever hold

I heard somebody whisper 'please adore me'

And when I looked the moon had turned to gold

Blue moon

Now I'm no longer alone

Without a dream in my heart

Without a love of my own

Want to hear it? Here is Julie London's version.

This was an interesting exercise in cool skintones - I wanted it to look like night time but not wash out all of the skintones, which would make the whole illustration look very cold, so I went with mauve tones with paynes grey added into the shadows.

Blue Moon was originally written in the early 30s, with three different sets of lyrics before it actually became Blue Moon with the fourth set - but most of the classic recordings of it are late 40s and 1950s, so I went with a fun 50s party dress and ponytail combo.

I was mucking about in Photoshop and decided to make a small animation for the line 'and when I looked the moon had turned to gold', just to see if I could make it work (animation effects are not my forte)

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

About 4 to 5 hours. 

Here are the three in this set that I have done so far. I think they look quite nice all together. 

I need to tweak the first one slightly - it was done much more quickly, and I'd like to adjust it so that it matches the other two a bit better in terms of moon size and the like. 

Moonlight Serenade [CC Champagne]

A Sleepy Lagoon [CC Magenta Haze]