good things come

Little things make me happy: this weekend's delicious Spanish red, the label of which is featured in the contemporary wine label design book I recently acquired as research for the beer label project. 

As a design theme it works brilliantly: according to the blurb, Matsu is a Japanese word that translated into English means "to wait". But Dunnottar Wines, my local wine emporium, doesn't stock the older dudes - I guess as you would expect, they're featured on the finer Matsu vintages. (Not, incidentally, a metaphor that necessarily holds true outside of the wine world...).

As an aside, I downloaded the snapseed app to edit the image on the iPad... and I like it! It's more intuitive than PS express and has a bunch more filters and textures. Best of all, it's free. And, as the blurb on the website where I found it said: "Snapseed: only you can decide whether to make your photos approximately 72 per cent more ominous"!!! Recommending...

butterflies on the side

An unusually 'technology-based' illustration for the autumn issue of Juno; both in subject and medium. To soften it, added hand-drawn butterflies, plus some extra on the side - pulled out of the original illustration in Photoshop so they can 'flit' around the text of the article.

Meanwhile, the design job (a music society leaflet) has reached the final text tweaks stage before hitting the printers, which means come August the real hard work begins. It's been a while since I've done any earnest self-promotion work so, for starters, there's a revamped website, art cards and an exhibition in the pipeline. It should tie in nicely with the publication of the book of children's plays - the first printer's proof of the book has arrived at the publishers and has had some lovely comments already over on their Facebook page.

dabbling

I had a wee shot of a friend's (very expensive) camera at the weekend, took a pic of Jack, then went at the original in Photoshop. The original is at the top, my effort underneath. I think it's quite cute...