The Cocktail Napkin - Thunder Thighs

The Cocktail Napkin - Graham Smith

Art Director, Craig Edwards pitched an interesting idea for "The Cocktail Napkin" - the last page feature in Miller-McCune magazine. He said, "The feature is a collection of short, humorous stories, I want the illustration to be doodled directly onto a cocktail napkin, then photographed at a bar".

"This months blurb is about a new type of dinosaur recently discovered and the funny name the scientists gave it."

Creating the funny little drawing was the easy part, but the assignment was to deliver a photograph of that drawing.

Suddenly, I needed to recreate a bar scene in my studio, and since this was a rush job, I needed to do it right away. Red reflections were added by dangling Christmas lights just out of frame. I sprinkled water drops nearby to add some authentic bar flair. I did use an actual fountain pen to draw the thunder thighed dinosaur, but not the pen in the photo. That pen is a Pelican, and has a deep blue pearl barrel, chosen as more photogenic than my daily drawer.  Shot = Jack Daniel's.

To get that narrow band of focus on the drawing, I opened the aperture of my 50mm lens up all the way, to f1.8 and popped the camera on a tripod. In the test photos, the shot glass still looked dark, so I held a tiny flashlight above it to add little sparkle details.

Next time, I'll try iced tea in the shot glass. It probably illegal to waste Jack Daniel's for a photo shoot.

Cheers,

G.