How a Hangover Saved My Great-Grandfather's Life

100 years ago, my great grandfather George Bailey had just been told that he had a new job. He'd been out of work for a while, in and out of work on Southampton Docks. The night before he was due to start work he decided that he would go out and celebrate with a few beers. He would be working hard on a ship as an engine stoker and would be away from home for quite a while. He wouldn't have much time for fun either, and an engine stoker was a really tough job.

The next morning my grandmother was not very pleased with him when she realised that he hadn't got up in time to catch the ship. She berated him for throwing away the chance to earn a good amount of money.

However, my grandfather had the last laugh when the ship - the Titanic - hit an iceberg.

After that he stayed on dry land working as a stevedor.

Family Tree:
Charles Bailey b 1846 -> George Bailey b 1877 -> Thomas FC Bailey b 1903 -> Thomas EG Bailey b 1933 -> Susan Bailey (me, now Smart)
Soo Smart

Does your business need illustrations to answer your brief

Do you ever get fed up seeing the same old stock images over and over again?

Have you ever spent hours trying to find an image that matches your clients description?

Or have you found a series of icons or illustrations that answer your client's brief, but they are all different in style and colour?

I have spent many hours searching for images or icons that fit with my clients needs, but rarely find a set of icons that completely covers their requirements, or a range of images that they want to pay for. I end up creating my own icons for websites and documents and have had many projects where I have created a range of illustrations in a consistent style for businesses and youth projects.

Businesses often need a strong bespoke image to communicate to their clients and using Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Ideas on iPad has been great for answering this perennial problem.  Creating vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator means that the images can be scaled for large format printing and reduced for the web and still look crisp. Mastering the Pen in Illustrator will be the best tool you'll ever use, once you get used to it in one programme, you will be able to transfer those skills into others such as Photoshop and InDesign.

The key to creating great illustrations is understanding the Pen tool:

From the left we have The Pen, Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point and Convert Anchor Point.
Start by clicking some dots on a page with the Pen Tool and use the Convert Anchor Point tool to smooth the corners:

Click and drag each anchor point to smooth the corners and use the Direct Selection tool:  this white arrow to move the anchor points into your desired position.

Experiment with borders and fills, thicknesses of border to explore how different this makes your illustration look:

You can look at more finished examples of illustrations created for businesses and youth projects here: click