Paint an Abstract Expressionist Jazz Album Cover

Album covers are square. Open Lopsy and press Cmd+N (or choose File → New). Set Width and Height to 1600, leave the background on white, and click Create.

Click the Background layer. Type 4A1A1C into the hex field of the Color panel and choose Edit → Fill.

The layout is two stacked fields with a thin gap between them, and a generous margin above and below for the type. Click the top ruler at 140 and 1460 to drop two vertical guides. Then click the left ruler at 260, 860, 920 and 1340 to drop four horizontal ones.

Double-click Layer 1 and rename it Upper Field. Press M for the Rectangular Marquee and drag from the top-left guide crossing (140, 260) to the crossing at 1460, 860. The marquee snaps to the guides.

Choose Select → Feather…, set it to 34 and click Apply. Set the foreground to #D65A2A and choose Edit → Fill. Press Cmd+D to deselect.

Click Add Layer at the bottom of the Layers panel and rename it Lower Field. Marquee from 140, 920 to 1460, 1340, feather it by 34 again, and fill it with #9E2F2A. Deselect.

Rothko's fields are close in value and slightly blurred, so they seem to hover. These two already do.

A feathered rectangle still looks machine-made. Press R for the Smudge tool and set Size 130 and Strength 40.

Select Upper Field and make slow, curved drags. Each one starts just inside an edge and drifts 20 to 50 px out into the ground. Work your way round the field, with the most drags along the top and right edges and only a few on the left. Vary their length and spacing. Then do the same on Lower Field, this time favouring the bottom edge. Uneven sides are what make the field feel painted.

Add a layer named Mottle above the fields. Choose Filter → Clouds…, set Scale to 6 and click Apply.

Open the layer's effects drawer with the ✦ button on its row, and set Blend to Soft Light. Then click the layer's opacity readout (100%) and drag the slider that opens to 22%. The fields now look like layers of thin stain.

Kline worked with cheap, wide house-painter's brushes, which leave separate bristle tracks. You'll make that tip yourself.

1. Add a layer named Brush Tip. Set the foreground to white. In the empty top-left corner of the canvas, marquee a box about 300 × 120 px, choose Edit → Fill and deselect.
2. Press B for the Brush. Click the brush thumbnail at the left of the options bar to open the Brushes modal and pick Hard Round.
3. Switch the foreground to black and draw about fifty short vertical ticks side by side across the box. Change the Size between 2 and 10 as you go, make some ticks three times longer than others, and leave small, uneven gaps.
4. Redo a few ticks in dark grey #3C3C3C and a few in #808080. Grey becomes partial coverage, like a bristle that's nearly dry.
5. Marquee round the ticks and choose Edit → Define Brush…. Name it Dry Flat.
6. Delete the Brush Tip layer with the trash button.

Define Brush turns dark pixels into paint, so the black ticks become bristles. The uneven tick lengths are important, because they give every stroke a ragged start and end.

Open the Brushes modal again. Dry Flat is now the active tip.

• Shape: Size 120, Opacity 28
• Dynamics: Opacity Jitter 30
• Texture: Grain

Set Fade in the options bar to 320.

The tip is a horizontal row of bristles, so it leaves streaks when you drag across the row. The angle dial on the Shape tab rotates it:

• 90° for strokes that go left or right
• 0° for strokes that go up or down (drop the Size to 110 for these)

Select Upper Field and set the foreground to #D65A2A. Brush two or three short strokes along its top and bottom edges, half on the edge and half off, and one up its right side.

Then select Lower Field, switch to #9E2F2A and do the same, with one stroke up its left side. Set Fade back to 0 when you're done.

Kline's whites are as important as his blacks. Click Mottle, then click New Group in the Layers panel and rename the group Gesture. Inside it, add a layer named Ochre and then one named White.

On White, set the foreground to #EDE3CF. In the Brushes modal, set Size 180, Opacity 100, Opacity Jitter 0 and Texture to No Texture.

1. Set the angle to 8°. In the orange field, a little left of centre, drag from just above the field's bottom edge up to near its top.
2. Set the angle to 14° and go over it once more, slightly offset, so the bristles don't line up.
3. In the crimson field, set the angle to 75° and drag a band that rises gently from the middle of the field to the right.
4. Set the angle to 70° and add a second, slightly lower pass.

Click the Ochre layer and set the foreground to #C28A3C. Set the brush to Size 110, Opacity 92, Opacity Jitter 15, Texture Grain and angle 70°.

Make one short stroke, rising slightly, in the left third of the crimson field. It's an accent, so keep it small.

Click White and add a layer named Beam above it. Set the foreground to #15110F. In the Brushes modal, set Size 190, Opacity 100, Opacity Jitter 0, No Texture and angle 0°.

Start in the bottom margin, just left of the cream stroke, and drag straight up until you're about 100 px below the top of the orange field. Make two more passes, each slightly offset and with a slightly different angle (4° and 357°), and stop each one at a different height.

A loaded brush runs dry at the end of a stroke. To show that, use narrow strokes that run out at different heights:

• Set the Size to 70 and drag from inside the beam up past its top.
• Do the same at Size 55, 45 and 40, at different places across the beam's width.

Each one should stop at a different height.

A perfectly upright beam crossed by an arm reads as a cross. Tilt it instead:

1. Open the View menu and untick Snap to Guides. Otherwise the marquee's bottom edge snaps to the 1340 guide and leaves the bristle tips behind. Leave it off for the rest of the painting.
2. Press M and marquee round the whole beam, with a little room to spare.
3. Press V for the Move tool. Drag the round handle just outside the top-right corner clockwise, about 8°.
4. Press Cmd+D to commit.

Click Beam and add a layer named Black above it. Press B and set the brush to Size 150 and angle 100°.

Start inside the upper part of the beam and drag right and slightly downhill, until you're about 130 px short of the right-hand guide. Then:

1. Make a second pass at Size 125 and 97°, a little lower.
2. Finish with three narrow strokes (Size 60, 45 and 50) that carry on past the end and stop at different lengths.

Letting the arm grow out of the beam, rather than crossing it, is what keeps the shape abstract.

Stay on Black. Set Size 190 and angle 53°. In the crimson field, start below the cream band and drag up and to the right, ending near the field's top-right corner.

Add a second pass at Size 165 and 49°. Then add three narrow strokes at Size 70, 55 and 45 that run out towards the top-right corner. The diagonal pushes against the beam and stops the picture from feeling static.

Kline painted white back over his blacks, so the edges fight. Add a layer named White Over above Black. Set the foreground to #EDE3CF, Size 90 and angle 0°.

1. Drag a short stroke straight up across the arm, about halfway along it.
2. At Size 80 and 355°, drag a second one up beside the lower right edge of the beam.

You'll tilt both of these later, once the rest is in place.

The lower cream band starts with a blunt end. Click White, then click Add Mask at the bottom of the Layers panel. Click the new mask thumbnail to edit the mask.

Choose the Gradient tool from the toolbox. Its default runs from black to white. Drag a short diagonal, up and to the right, across the band's left tip. Black hides, so the tip fades out. The blue overlay shows what's hidden.

Click the White row to leave mask editing.

Click White Over, then add a layer named Drips. Choose the Brush with Hard Round, and set the foreground back to lamp black #15110F. Each drip is a single wobbly drag straight down from just inside a black edge.

• In the Brushes modal, set Size between 9 and 12.
• Set Taper to a little more than the drip's length, so it narrows to a point.

Make one or two from the underside of the arm and two from the bottom edge of the diagonal, between 50 and 120 px long. On two of them, set Taper back to 0 and add a tiny 10 px drag at the end for a bead.

Add a layer named Splats. Click once with the Hard Round brush at Size 30, just beyond the top-right end of the diagonal.

Switch to Smudge at Size 14 and Strength 80. Drag four or five short spikes outward from the dot's centre. Then go back to the brush at Size 3 to 6 and click a few flecks around it. Make two smaller splats (sizes 20 and 14) nearby.

Step back and look at the whole painting. A few marks still look stamped, and the splats are the first: they're too round. Choose Smudge at Size 18 and Strength 85. Drag one long tail out of each splat, down and to the right, as if the paint was flung from the upper left.

The two creams on White Over stand perfectly upright and read as boxes. Select White Over, press M and marquee round the cream on the arm. With the Move tool, drag the rotate handle about 11° anticlockwise and press Cmd+D. Then marquee the cream beside the beam and rotate it about 13° clockwise.

A beam with dead-straight sides still looks like a letter. Select Beam, set the foreground to #15110F and choose the Brush with Dry Flat at Size 90 and angle 8°. Drag up along the beam's left edge, bowing out about 20 px around the middle of the picture, as if you leaned on the brush there. Go over it again at Size 50.

Add two narrow stray tines (Size 36) on the left edge, one high and one low. Then select White, switch to #EDE3CF, and add two narrow tines at Size 46 that stray past the right edge of the big cream.

Rothko's fields seem lit from behind. Select Upper Field, open its effects drawer and tick Outer Glow. Set the colour to #F0762E, Size 70, Spread 0 and Opacity 45.

Collapse the Gesture group with its arrow, click its row and add a layer named Linen. A new layer added while a collapsed group is selected lands above it.

Set the foreground to #808080 and choose Edit → Fill with nothing selected. Then run these filters:

1. Filter → Add Noise…: Amount 100, Mono, Uniform.
2. Filter → Motion Blur…: Angle 90, Distance 5.
3. Add Noise again: Amount 70, Mono, Uniform.
4. Motion Blur again: Angle 0, Distance 5.
5. Filter → Emboss…: Angle 135, Strength 40.

The two noise-and-blur passes make crossing threads, and Emboss gives them relief. Set the layer's blend to Overlay at 30%.

Overlay doesn't change pure black, so choose Layer → Duplicate Layer. Rename the copy Linen Lift and set it to Screen at 7%. Now the weave shows on the beams too.

With Linen Lift selected, click New Group and rename it Type.

Changing font or size in the Text options restyles whichever text layer is selected. So before each new piece of text, click Add Layer to select an empty layer, and delete these helpers at the end.

1. Add an empty layer inside Type. Press T for the Text tool and pick League Gothic at Size 112, with the foreground set to #EDE3CF.
2. Click in the top margin, type GRAVEL LULLABY and press Tab to commit.
3. In the Text panel, set Letter spacing to 3.
4. With the Move tool and the arrow keys, put the left edge of the letters on the 140 guide and the cap tops 80 px from the top. The baseline lands at 164.

Add another empty layer. Choose Instrument Serif, Italic, Size 66, and set Letter spacing back to 0 (the panel keeps the last value). Type the Odile Marsh Quintet.

Nudge it until its right edge sits on the 1460 guide. Line up the bottom of the lowercase "the" with the title's baseline, not the tail of the Q, which hangs below the line.

Add another empty layer and set Libre Franklin, SemiBold, Size 24, Letter spacing 5. Type LARK RECORDS and put it on the left guide with its baseline at 1520. That's 80 px from the bottom, the same margin as above the title.

Add one more empty layer and type LP 4127 · STEREO, right-aligned to the 1460 guide on the same baseline. Delete the empty helper layers.

Choose File → Quick Export PNG for the finished sleeve and File → Save Project to keep every layer, mask and effect editable.

For a whole series, keep the brush and the type layout and change the fields. A blue-over-black sleeve with a single white beam would make a good companion record.