Project: create a product label that combines historical art styles into one retro look.

Product: La Planeta shiraz. La Planeta is a new italian wine company, but in the short time they've been making wine they've firmly established a reputation for quality and tradition. I needed an illustration that suggested quality without boring formality. Taking a cue from the product name, I decided to do the sun and moon getting drunk.

A lot of people in my class were picking styles to combine that were already very similar; for some reason art nouveau and art deco was a popular combination. Not that there's anything wrong with that way of thinking... I just wanted to do something more unusual. I picked styles that would complement the look and idea I was going to do, but also would contrast as much as possible with eachother, to make an interesting combination.

I studied classical sketches by Michealangelo and Davinci, and I studied Aubrey Beardsley, particularly his early work. I thought the soft careful modelling of the classical drawings and the flat graphic patterning and stylization of the deco/nouveau designs would be interesting and complementary.

So voila. The faces scanned incredibly dark unfortunately, but besides that and the horribly wonky shoulder on my sun, I'm fairly pleased with the result.

This is watercolors, conte, and ink. The teachers wanted to torture us I guess and made us PAINT IT HUGE: I think the final dimensions were something like 28 by 15. I had to scan it in in TEN BLOODY PIECES and it took me almost three hours to get the damned thing all scanned and ready to print; I think I deserve a cookie just for that.