Home brewed, handmade labeled - Family Affair

This is a tale of a journey, .... an adventure...

I was recently asked by my son Ryan to do something artistic that he could use to label his 'home brew'. My son has made several batches of home brew these past few years, and he was now interested in labeling the different batches to them separate them from one another, and provide an interesting look to his bottled brew. This assignment has kept me busy the past month and a half. So far we have collaborated on labels for 4 different batches of home brew. An added complication is that we are collaborating 'across the miles' - my son is in Texas and I am in California. We exchanged ideas, rough sketches, early drafts, and the final images via phone calls and email. I shipped the final digital images via email, and my son printed the labels in Texas and applied them to the bottles. This picture shows labeled bottles from 3 of the batches.

At the beginning of June the request for the first label was for the "Apricot Ale". This label assignment appealed to me because I love apricots - I was raised in a house that had an apricot tree in the backyard that was left behind when our home was built. With my first assignment I went to the grocery store and bought some good looking apricots and took them home and arranged them in my son's glass beer mug that he had received from his brother. The first sketch included just the mug and the apricots. I sent a digital image of the label to my son in Texas, and he asked if I could add some Hops.... Gee, I had no idea what Hops looked like. But, with Google and Wikipedia to the rescue.... armed with a few printouts I went to my painting class, and my teacher Jolene Anderson helped me figure out where I could 'tuck in' some Hops. My son was pleased with the final image.

Next up was a Cider that was to be titled, "Simply Cider". This time I bought some new fresh red apples and arranged them on the table, and scanned the internet for some sort of picture of a keg or barrel. I settled on drawing a barrel.




At this point I realized that the necks of the bottles needed some decoration as well, and I designed the following 'neck-hugger' that could be used as a general label: One night my son called to say goodnight (he is 2 hours ahead of California time) and he said he needed another label for an 'Ale', but he didn't have a name for it - it was 'unnamed' and he was heading to bed... But, he did mention the name of a nearby street 'Whitecap Drive'. That got me thinking about a wave image that I had painted last fall. It took me several iterations, but I was able to 'harvest' my November 2009 wave image, for "Whitecap Ale".



The final label in the series for the time being, is for a Kolsch. For this label, Ryan wanted to use a sketch that he had done of a bike coming over a mountain top. You see, my son is a bike racer and he loves hills!! During a road race there are awards besides the final winner. In the middle of the race there may be one or more 'KOM' awards for the cyclist that gets to the top of the mountain first. They are designated the 'King of the Mountain' (KOM). This was the inspiration for the "KOM Kolsch".



This has certainly been a fun venture with my son, and an excuse for me to do some sketching and painting!!