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| I know what you're thinking - how'd he get his trousers inside the cast? Simple - it's magic! |
Sometime around 1981, a fellow I used to do signwriting for asked if I would produce a poster to advertise a car insurance scheme he was promoting. So I did, and he was so pleased with it that he asked me to do another one the same. The poster was bloody huge, measuring 3' wide by 2 & 1/2' high, so I wasn't about to start from scratch, having had to spread the first one out on the floor and lie on my stomach to do it. Therefore, being a reasonably clever laddie, I decided to photocopy the original illustrations on the first poster, colour them by hand, and stick them onto the new one.
So that's what I did. I used EL TEMPO marker pens (remember them?) for the lettering, which was very basic, but I'd underestimated the work involved in the initial illustrations in regard to the price, so I wasn't going to knock myself out. (And I did this one cheaper as I was using photocopies.) The lettering wasn't anything special, but I was pleased with the drawings, which weren't bad for a 22 year-old.
I had originally drawn the man off the top of my head, and the car had been copied (freehand) from a small photo in a brochure, but they were each too large to photocopy in one piece so I did them in sections and then joined them together before affixing them to the new poster. They were coloured in with a combination of felt markers and a flesh-toned colouring pencil, as had the original (which had been drawn with an ordinary Tempo writing pen).
I don't quite know why this poster has been lying in my cupboard for over thirty years. Going by the tack-marks and the dirt, it's definitely hung on an office or workshop wall, so I can only assume I was given it back at some stage to produce yet another copy, and then perhaps the insurance company went bust or the fellow for whom I did the poster ended his association with them. Who knows?
Anyway, their loss is my gain, as I retain a reminder from my early years when I was capable of turning things out practically overnight.
The fate of the original poster remains unknown.
2 comments:
"...early years when I was capable of turning things out practically overnight."
Boy, did that phrase ever strike a chord. There are times when I look at an old piece of work, and wonder how on earth I could sit up all night to get it done. Don't know if if it's a case of get-up-and-go-has-got-up-and-gone, or just plain laziness, but there's no way I could pull an all-nighter these days.
cheers
B Smith
Thing is, B, I used the word 'overnight' to mean that I had the poster ready for the next day. I only spent a couple of hours (maybe three) in the evening on it. Although, when I was freelancing full-time for IPC and Marvel, etc., there were occasions when I had to do 'all-nighters' in order to meet tough deadlines. I doubt that I could do it either these days.
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