The 2015 sixth grade play at the school where my husband was teaching at the time was a production of a play by Brian D. Taylor called The Murder Mystery at the Murder Mystery. As you can well imagine, an actual murder happens during the production of murder mystery play and the cast has to solve who did it. Normally, my husband would write the plays the sixth graders performed based on ideas the students suggested. That year, the students wanted to perform an already existing play and this play was available through the Pioneer Drama Service. I loved designing and illustrating this poster. It's still one of my favorites. I used to watch the PBS series Mystery with my parents and always loved the Edward Gorey animation sequence at the beginning of the program, so it wasn't much of a leap to design an Edward Gorey inspired poster.
My first step in creating the illustration was to do a very rough sketch with the text already layed out. I find it easier to draw around an already existing text design than trying to design around an already existing drawing.
The next step was this pen and ink drawing. I had a number of Edward Gorey books spread out around my work space so I could mimic the way he handled the pen and ink, as well as the clothing design. Then I scanned the art, and added color to it in photoshop. The drawing was the top layer set on "multiply" so all the white became transparent and all the color layers underneath could be visible.
I had forgotten to add the playwright's credit to the poster so I made sure to add it to the program cover. The programs were always photocopied so all designs had to work in black and white. This one was easy: all I did was use the ink drawing for the art.
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