Stampede Design
David Smith
Recently David A. Smith, a United Kingdom based designer, produced a wonderful turn-of-the-century, trade-card styled album cover for popular American singer/songwriter John Mayer. David A. Smith, specialising in high-quality ornamental hand-crafted artwork, reverse glass signs and decorated silver and gilded mirrors for this purpose.
Dave Smith is a name that has become synonymous in sign-writing circles with high quality, hand crafted reverse glass signs and decorative mirrors. It is fair to say that nowadays this is the main thrust of his work. There is, however, more to his story.
His career in sign-writing began in 1984, when he left Westlands School in Torquay, aged 16 and was apprenticed for 5 years with Gordon Farr & two associates. These gentleman were traditional sign-writers, who had come up through the ranks and Gordon, in particular had an almost uncanny ability to paint letters, accurately laid out, without even a preliminary sketch. Under their tutelage, Dave became an accomplished draftsman, accurate letter painter & talented pictorials.
The artwork took roughly one month to complete, drawings were made separately in this time, but most of the artwork from Vectoring and finishing in Photoshop took just short of 28 days.
Watch the making of John Mayer’s ‘Born & Raised’ artwork video below.
Check out more of David Smith artworks at Behance.