Wedding Invite

Nope, not the other one - if it were, it would be a bit of a departure from the swans. This is a different one, for a buddy of mine at work (must be my year for wedding invitation drawings).

The best part about this invitation is that it was printed up on letterpress. That means that all the type was set in the old way, with each letter cast in lead and put together Gutenberg style. And what it also means is that the drawing was printed the same way. So they took the drawing, and sent it off to have it made into a metal plate for the press. Not just Illustrator pixels, not a paper printout, but cast in metal.

I feel like Albrecht Dürer.

If he drew bicycling rabbis, that is.

Wedding Invite: the pencil comp

A friend is getting married in Hong Kong this year, and she asked Serena to do the invitation, and me to do the drawing. She said she wanted swans, so my first take on this was to do them like an Asian brush painting.

When she saw them, she said don't do that. Go full-out fairy-tale style.

For me, that's like saying to your puppy, "No, don't play with the rubber bone. Here, have some steak."

I mean, I love Chinese and Japanese brushwork, it's absolutely amazing. But even more than that, I'm the biggest fairy-tale geek, so I was all over this.

The final will be in full color, so I get to have even more fun.