The Bottle

This is an illustration for Guitarist magazine, Art Directed by Phil Millard who came up with the brilliant idea of an elixir in an old apothecary jar, called 'vintage vibe' that would give the player an instant 'mojo' in the same way that reproductions of classic guitars claim to.
It was a great idea, and needed doing properly to justify it.
So I travelled up the motorway to a place called Bygone times in Chorley in Lancashire.
This is an old mill crammed full with loads of 'old stuff' for want of a better word, not really antiques, but really interesting.
They had loads of old bottles and I found just the one, and it was really cheap.
Next I bought some brown sugar and poured it in the bottle, to make it appear like the alixir.
I came home and designed the label, looking at old packaging, and making it look as authentic as I could, distressing the edges.
The next part, was actually photographing it with my trusty Nikon D50 camera.
I took 35 shots in the shoot, and of course the first one was the best!
But I did bring in parts of another photo which I like elements of (the shine and lighting, and the label was clearer.)
Opening the RAW file (essentially like a digital dark room) then cleaning it up in Photoshop was the final piece of the jigsaw.
Phil absolutely loved it, I've found that 99 times of 100, if I love it the client will, and is unlikely to change a lot.