The other day I had a quick last minute task I needed to do. I realized that if I was going to get a sixth birthday card to my nephew in time, it needed to be posted that day, and by the 3:30 post. It was 2:00. I’d not made a card yet. Nor designed one. Pictures of roses were probably not going to cut it. No doubt somewhere on my hard drive is a picture of something I took, maybe even with a card for him in mind, that would make sense to use…. but it would take me longer to look for it than to simply think of something afresh.
So I stared at the wall for a while. Six…. six….. I wanted an image that somehow says six…. Ah! An insect. Six legs. So I googled insect images for a nice shot, and found a photo of this pleasant and cheerfully coloured beetle. I put it up on screen and got out a pencil and did a quick sketch of it. I was then going to do some nice inked lines and then digitally paint it, but I still had to fight with the printer, and get it to the post office, and so instead I went over some parts in a softer pencil, and then dug out my coloured pencils and did the blue of the beetle as best I could, blending colours a little. Then I scanned it and trimmed it.
It made it to him in time…
-cvj
