A wine label project re-creating the "E" from my client's mother's sterling silver cigarette box. Sometimes it's relaxing to go "old school", turn off the electronics, listen to some nice music and draw by hand with all the tools we once relied upon before the computer made it so much faster and sometimes easier...but not always.

My separate set up with my vellum paper for drawing, circles, French curve, adjustable triangle, triangles, black Le Pen, kneaded eraser, white artist tape, and cutting board with my Mayline ruler. With a HB pencil I've roughed out some guidlines. The top beginning had some errors so I started again.

I took a photo of the top of the cigarette box, scanned it, printed it for my base. Vellum tissue is taped over the scan. With my French curve that bends in all kinds of directions, I can draw the outline with my Le Pen "pen". You can see I messed up on the left side and started all over. I use a black Sharpie to fill in the dark areas, and the Le Pen to carefully touch up the inside edges.

To get some of the tighter curves sometimes a circle template works better than a French curve.

I used an adjustable triangle to draw a diagonal with my Le Pen. If all angles are the same you can lock in the angle so you don't have to figure it out each time. I put a piece of tape on my Le Pens with the date so I know how old it is. There's nothing like a brand new project using a brand new Le Pens.

I filled in the one side with the Le Pen. You can see some of the pencil guides.

My old Mayline ruler is used to draw the straight lines.

Drawing more pencil guides so I know where to stop the black inck without guessing.

More diagonals are draw with the adjustable triangle and then the inside edges are touched up.

I usually touch up the inside edges with the Le Pen and then go in there carefully with a Sharpie to fill it in. I use the Le Pen first since I learned long ago, sometimes you can get a little crazy filling in with a Sharpie and then it goes outside the edges. If that happens I take a post-it and put the sticky side against the edge that's rough. Then later in the scanning process, it's easier to clean up.

The center line is drawn with the triangle firmly against the Mayline ruller so I get a nice straight line.

To draw the bottom curved diamond, I line up the bottom part of the vertical rule with a circle template. And see I have a piece of paper under my hand so I don't get the oil from my skin onto the paper. I learned that from Mrs. Smith--my 8th grade art teacher.

I take my kneaded eraser once I know the pen ink is dry and get rid of the pencil marks so they won't show up in the scanning process. If you try this right after you've drawn the black lines, the kneaded eraser with make the black ink smear and then that's something else to clean up. So just be patient, eat some oatmeal or something and let it dry before erasing.

A comparison of the scan of the photograph on the right, and the final drawing on the left. I see the right side of the bottom area doesn't match the left side so I'll fix that in the scanning process.

The final "E" all clean up with the computers help and looking very pretty.

The final Eagle Family Merlot wine label design.