Eric White has been painting LPs since he had a dream that Elton John had assholes for eyes. He has an ongoing series of LP paintings on his website, spanning across all genres and totaling over thirty five completed pieces. The mood of the pieces range from trippy, to desolate, to oddly macabre—right up Tyler, The Creator’s alley.
A fan of Tyler and the entire Odd Future crew since catching a show in 2011, White tells us the opportunity to create the cover for Tyler's new Scum Fuck Flower Boy album is “an honor because I’m really into what he’s done visually from the very beginning.”
Tyler approached the cover with a specific set of ideas, but ultimately trusted White enough to let him to finish the piece after the final compositions were agreed upon. While they were in the midst of the creative process, Tyler showed White some of his own sketches, and White admits, “I was really impressed with his drawings and especially with his use of color. I think he has a much better innate capacity for working with color than I do.”
Outside of the jarring color palette, White points out that the cover is loaded with details, revealing that "there is a tiny Maclaren on the road" even if it's "barely legible on Instagram, and probably not at all on iTunes."
Continue to see more of White's work and read our full interview with the Michigan artist.
How did you and Tyler connect for this project?
He had seen my work in the book Rizzoli published recently and liked my work, and I was a fan of his. I had seen Odd Future at Highline Ballroom in NYC in 2011. I had done a few album covers and other commercial work in the past, but I hadn’t done a cover in many years as I’m focused on my own work now. But this was too exciting of an opportunity to pass up. His manager got in touch and soon after that Tyler and I spoke on the phone and we started the process.
What was the process of working with Tyler like? How hands on was he after the initial idea?
He had some very specific ideas in mind for the cover, which evolved a bit during the process, but I was really into it. I think Tyler was initially thinking it would be similar to my series of paintings in which the viewer’s perspective is from inside a car. He would send me sketches of what he was thinking and some photos that expressed the tone he was looking for. I would make detailed comps based on his sketches and ideas, and we went back and forth a couple times. After I showed him the final comp, he was on board and basically left me alone until I finished the painting.
