Fistful of posters promote maestro of spaghetti Westerns

Illustrator Steve Simpson recently applied his distinct playful, painterly style, to this eye-catching poster design for The Light House Cinema in Dublin. The brief was create artwork to promote a season of films celebrating the work of composer, orchestrator and conductor Ennio Morricone. The Italian maestro was responsible for the scores featured in many classic films, including A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Simpson spoke to Creative Bloq about his design: "I've always been a Ennio Morricone fan, having grown up on a healthy diet of spaghetti westerns - so, naturally, I jumped at the chance. I'd initially planned on illustrating some of the iconic elements from the westerns; dusty cowboy boots, spent bullet cases and cigar butts.

"But as three of the films had no cowboys in them I ended up just using hand-drawn type. I found the original move posters for each of the films online, as I wanted to use the original type for each film, and moved it around and simplified it to make it work for the tabs on this poster.

"The artwork was penciled out, scanned into Photoshop CC and used as a guide for the creating the artwork. I create the basic shapes using the vector tool and than add tone and texture afterwards. The only font used was in the ribbon, as this needed to change to cover different events.

"I was told Mr Morricone was very taken with the artwork and took a couple of framed copies for his house... that made me very happy."

Morricone isn't the only one - we're big fans of the unique nostalgic, retro style that runs throughout Simpson's impressive body of work. This visual treat is one of many beautiful piece that features in this talented artist's awe-inspiring portfolio.

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