Money for old rope…

I’ve just finished an illustration for an new craft beer and thought I’d share it with you. I can’t tell you anything about the brand just yet, but hope to share it with you eventually.

The design called for a illustration of a nautical style knot – specifically, a reef (or square) knot with the ends tied off in a wall knot, like this:

I needed to explore the shape of the knot and scale of the the rope to match the composite on the brief, and add depth in the form of hard shadows:

This image then required distressing to give the impression that this was a vintage diagram, with a much looser feel than the digital drawing. This was first put through another digital process that allowed me some carefully controlled manipulation before transferring the drawing to a block of lino:

I did about half a dozen prints of varying quality which were then scanned.

Finally, the scans were converted to vectors and some further manipulations were made to clean up the frayed ends of the rope, resulting in:

I’ll share the full design just as soon as I can!

4 Replies

    • Thanks Cathryn – it’s a nice way to work using the best of both worlds, but no amount of digital manipulation can really capture the that authentic ‘handmade’ quality.

  • As a largely inept amateur I find the explanation of the process really interesting. Am impressed with the craft that goes into producing the finished work. Look forward to seeing it in situ. DWx

    • Thank you Sir, I’m glad you enjoyed it! It’s small jobs like this one that allow me to go further and give me an enormous amount of satisfaction. I was given a good brief and was really encouraged throughout the process. I have recently seen the finished design concepts and the whole package is really great. I can’t wait to be able to make it public!

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