MH the Verb‘s new album, “The Balloon Guide”, drops February 11, 2014 — I painted the cover. If you’d like to keep reading, I’ll share how this project came to be creatively; and I’ll include the business details.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a9e1v_mh-the-verb-s-balloon-guide-album-cover-by-borbay_music

Check the entire process which double’s for a music video for the track Roads (MH the Verb feat. Stewie, Produced By: Cutty Franks, Album: The Balloon Guide (2014).) Had some fun with this one… stitched in personal photos throughout.

As musicians and artists are wont to do, we met at a bar to discuss the project. Since ‘The Balloon Guide’ is an exploration of stops along the 2 train, we figured a visual combination of a train, balloons and the NYC skyline would be the money — in a Futurist style, of course.

If you’ve never seen MH the Verb standing there, holding balloons in Union Square, well, you haven’t lived. This lady is pretty excited about it. My guess? She’s listening to All the Single Ladies… or Feist.

This is the image I pulled the balloons from. It seemed important the album cover’s balloons were the exact ones MH was holding underground.

Always the Gentleman, at wrap, MH handed the balloons to the most excited kid in the world. It was beautiful.

I’m not an artist to get excited about stretching canvas… I purchase them ready and shrink-wrapped. Sometimes my hand writes on the plastic, and a camera records while I rip it apart — akin to razing a building before creating another on its imprint.

A red hot under painting is important. So is good business. Our deal for this painting was beautiful… a perfect synergy. MH gets the painting, I get a song about my Daughter Coraline, written and performed by MH (cameo by yours truly, I’m trying to build-up my “feat. Borbay” repertoire.) We have a merchandising split in play, as well as a 50-50 split on the resale price of the painting, should MH ever decide to part ways with it.

I wanted to capture the orange fade into blue… the moment the sun smolders upon the horizon.

In my Futurist work, I enjoy exploring multiple times of day in the same picture plane… so, a stripe of night touches the train.

The skyline fills in, dark, mysterious, true.

Carving into the train, setting the foundation for a flying piece of metal. Incidentally, Mayor de Blasio should look into combining the MTA and the movie Up to avoid delays. I’ll take a small municipal commission for identifying this time saving device. And by small, I mean typical, so $45.6 million will do.

You’d have to imagine, a floating train would have strong headlights.

Painting balloons. Fun. Probably more fun that carrying them through a subway station, definitely more fun than filling them. Less fun than sucking the helium out of them to make unusual voices.

A deeper light shoots from the Empire State Building. More balloons painted in. Can you believe someone suggested I was on mushrooms other than shitaki while painting this picture?

More light beam action.

Oh, getting close, but I painted the “A” train, and this was wrong.

It’s the 2 train. Don’t miss MH’s album…

MH, it was a pleasure working with you. A consummate professional and passionate creative… you can’t ask for more. Now, let’s hope a floating train can achieve the same level of fame this Beastly Airplane has.

Here’s World B. Omes’ joint (pun) — so delicious one might view it in the mirror and read, “eat me”.