Album Art Wanted!

Main Duties

Manchester, UK-based electronic musician Medulasa is seeking a visual artist able to deliver album cover art for a forthcoming neo-Gothic electronic music record. There is a fixed fee of all aspects of the work of £500. The artist is commissioning work inspired by Art Nouveau, Expressionism, and the works of Yoshitaka Amano, preferably utilising either traditional illustration and watercolour, digital illustration and vibrant digital watercolour, or some combination of the two. Collaborative approaches are highly valued by the artist, too. The work is supported by UK music charity Sound and Music’s “In Motion” programme.

Art Direction

Art is described as follows: Stylistically, somewhere between Yoshitaka Amano’s 80s period and Art Nouveau illustration, meets Wolfgang Paalen’s darker abstract works for the background cityscape image.

View the Pinterest moodboard for the album cover:

https://uk.pinterest.com/medulasaorgana/goth-album-moodboard/

Description of Artwork

Square digital/digitised cover art of 3000 x 3000 pixels (or close to).

Left hand side and top: Banded by an art nouveau style framing device in the Glasgow style, or similar to suit the rest of the piece.

Right hand side foreground: Half of a human face (pale, vacant) emerging out of beautifully pastel watercoloured (bright oranges and purples preferred) vaguely-organic structure (Giger-esque biomechanical/gross biological structures, think mutated pupae). Somewhat grotesque in nature.

Central and bottom of image, background: Barren land behind with “Vampire Hunter D”-type abstract gothic cityscape in distant background. See also Wolfgang Paalen for reference.

Keywords: ethereal, gothic, body horror, industrial, beautiful, foul.

Context

Your artwork will contribute to Medulasa’s revisionist project “Remaking the Gothic” which reimagines what the Gothic is and can be in music in the current (electronic) musical context. Key musical references include Rainy Miller, aya, These New Puritans, The Cure, the body, Charli XCX’s “House”. To this end, they have created a YouTube lecture series called “Cathedrals of Sound” aimed at taking interested parties through the step-by-step process of creating the New Gothic from first principles. Your artwork will be the first thing that many people associate with this music on first discovering it and should reflect a new approach to the Gothic.

Deadline, Budget and Delivery

Work will need to be entirely completed by 27th February 2026, in the form of a high-quality digital file (png, for example). This includes an initial deadline of February 6th for the initial concept draft. The budget is £500 flat-rate, including one concept draft plus up to two rounds of feedback. Creative feedback and direction can be undertaken via email although I am flexible as to how to approach this based on artists’ preference.

Rights and Usage

The artwork will be utilised across album artwork and related media including streaming sites,  Bandcamp, social media, promotional materials, with scope for a renegotiation of rights for merchandise in future, or potential for full rights transfer dependent on artist preference within the stated budget. The artwork will also be used together with typography and other designs related to both the record and Medulasa across social media as part of promotion for the record, although no alterations will be made to the artwork itself without the artists’ approval. Anywhere that it is possible to do so, your name will be proudly displayed next to the artwork, together with links to your other work and social media. Rights and usage will be agreed and confirmed in writing before work begins.

Skills and Experience Required

All artists are invited to apply, so long as they are happy with the rate of pay, which is fixed.