After being Instagram acquaintances for a few months and not long after my meeting with the the two principals of the company at a craft show, I was contacted by Worker Bee Supply Co. to produce one of their inspirational posters. Up to this point, much of my work was done experimentally on more of a subconscious level by doing free form drawings with no planning, and now I had to use more of a deliberate process to achieve the goals of the project. The quote, "Nothing Will Work Unless You Do" by the late poet Maya Angelou was the focus, so I went with the direction of creatures in nature had at work to achieve their day-to-day tasks and produced the thumbnails seen below:

Although working completely digitally from start to finish is how many creatives are working these days, I'm still more of a pencil and paper person and feel out of place if I don't have a few sheets of copy-paper and a pencil in front of me to start the process. And I still employ the use of a small light table to redraw the final details in pencil and all the way to the black line work.

Although I did like some of the other thumbnails, I showed three versions to the client and this was the one they liked the best, which made me happy as I agreed that it was the strongest of them.

After tracing the final sketch in marker on the light table on an 11x17 inch sheet of copy paper, I scanned the art in two pieces and merged them together using a feature in Adobe Bridge, a major time-saving move. Then, after touching up the line work in Photoshop, I imported the file into Adobe Illustrator and used the Live Trace feature with some adjusted settings. Depending on the size of the final piece, I may have to smooth out some of the lines so they don't distract from the rest of the image.

Worker Bee likes to give their artists control over what they produce on a creative level, but the one rule that had to be followed for this screen-printed project was that it be just two colours (two screens for the printing process). This ensured that the budget was consistent for each print they produced. Just to push the envelope, I did present a three colour version as I did feel strong about the result, but at the same time I didn't want to be the one person who bent the rules and was just as happy with the two colour version.

To both the myself and the client's surprise, they were contacted by the organizers of the 2018 Toronto Interior Design Show to be a part of the Canadian by Nature exhibit which featured the selected works of a number of Canadian artists and makers from across the country. We were definitely happy to have the piece highlighted on a platform of this stage and will always be a career highlight. A big thanks to Becca and Eugen of Worker Bee Supply Co. for involving me in such a great project, and if you would like to purchase a print, they are available for order at www.workerbeesupply.com