Skiing

Amateur psychologists please read into this one what you will. Instead of going out into the heaviest snow London has seen since the 70's and having fun, I stayed in and drew other people doing just that.

Well, it was last day of the transfer window! I wonder how many times I hit refresh?!

Voices - Well, Mine

The struggle to find a visual voice.

I've been working very hard on mine all year and after finding a way forward that I'm thoroughly happy with and excited by, this feels like a nice full stop for 2008.

Happy Christmas all, and here's to 2009!

Giving Bush A Good Shoeing

Another caricature... I'm still learning... Lacking a bit of life and likeness methinks.

When I read this, I also wanted to throw my shoe, my computer and my kitchen sink at him.

Illustrated Song Titles

Some excellent stuff this month, check out the artwork and banter here.

Men, Women & Music

Double post today! My goodness...

This image is another piece of portfolio filler, or booster if you like. I guess booster's a little more positive! It's based on this article debunking (good word...) a theory put forward by Lesley Douglas, the BBC's co-ordinator of popular music.

"According to Douglas, men and women listen to music differently. Women are more likely to interact with music emotionally, whereas men - walking calculators, all of us - hear it on an intellectual, analytical level".

I respond to music emotionally for sure. In fact I have to go and hide in the pit at Thursday gigs because as soon as the first chordal explosion of raw emotional emo power blasts from the speakers I start wailing and flailing like a infant loosing a prized spinning duck thingie (when was the last time you saw a rattle?). Apparently, I like the author, am not alone.

"Across the country, there are millions of men who react to music very emotionally just like me. I have seen men breathless with emotion at gigs by Doves or the Verve, overcome with something at the proximity to Morrissey; grown men in tears at gigs by Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson. I have seen Liverpool hardcases emerge with tearstained faces from a gig by Joe Strummer. I haven't been to many gigs where male voice choirs emit a unified cry of "But isn't the middle eight bonzer?"

So there. Were all whimps and we've admitted it. Are you happy now? See these tears? Do you see 'em!

Also, apparently, women are pretty good at this analytical stuff. Who'da thunk it?

"There are now scores of female rock journalists, many of whom are capable of stripping a song down to its nuts and bolts as well - and in some cases a lot better - than us blokes, as well as relating to the music's emotional impact."

So there. We're all great and therefore undemographicable (ha! There's the longest word I'll make up this week). I guess musical co-ordinators up and down the globe will cease to pigeon hole the population and stick people into nice little groups and... oh.

Oh well.

Back From Cape Town

Hey, hey, I'm back!

Been away a couple weeks in sunny South Africa seeing all my lovely in-laws which explains my lack of posting.

This image is one of many sketchbook pages drawn whilst over there. This wasn't supposed to be a political commentary on SA, it was just a fun scribble in my moleskine, but as I was scanning it I realised it may possibly might just be some kinda unconcious comment on the situation there! Great place, great people but plenty concerns for the present and the future.

Plain Vectors

Ok, bit tenuous I know, but there's no chance of me doing anything cleverer for Illustration Friday this week.

This piece can be loosely linked to housing market stuff but was really done as a portfolio booster as I will be hitting the mean streets again fairly soon (as soon as I've been away on holiday and stopped procrastinating... early 2012 then!) as I need some more colourful, slick stuff. Hopefully this fits the bill!

Weather crappy again in London today which seems to fit the sad news about Heath Ledger. I was just reading about his new role as The Joker over breakfast. My condolences to his family. Strange how I feel compelled to write about a guy who I never knew. Funny how movie stars can provoke that feeling in people. We invite them into our living rooms so I suppose there's no reason why they shouldn't therefore become part of our lives. I guess it's also the "before his time" deal. Plenty of that going around too. All very sad.

Why I Came Back

So...

I was stressing. I'd started this blog at work because I was getting back into illustration, I was bored, and I wanted to post the little things I was making in between jobs. Also I'd discovered Illustration Friday and I was having fun with that.

I went on other Illustrator's sites. The way that people had dealt with the blogging issue appears to very much be a tale of 2 cities. On one hand you have my favourite illustrator's website (not my favourite illustrator... although he is awesome! But his site is especially awesome!) which integrates the blog squarely into the site. In my opinion, Kevin Cornell has perfectly designed a portfolio/weblog site. The home page opens up straight into the blog with all the portfolio and other projects, links and goodies arranged down the right. The portfolio sections and the store are easy to navigate and beautifully designed. A gorgeous creation.

On the other hand you have Illustrators who sepearate the blog and the website. I assume they do this for the same reasons I do. They have an existing website, free blog sites are super easy to set up and use, they are unsure that they will keep the blog up and they have a lack of technical knowledge to create their own. The amount of coding required to set up a portfolio site is, well, I set one up in my first Dreamweaver lesson. A blog page with comments and and all the trimmings is a little more complicated to code from scratch.

So I ignored all that. I was so into bearskinrug that I tried essentially to copy it.

I failed. Why? Because I don't have the technical skill to do it. I could have paid someone to do it for me but... I wanted to be in control. Also, it was awesome procrastination.

I was teaching myself all the coding I needed in order to create the site and I started to put it up online and one weekend when it had all gone wrong again I sat there staring at my screen and looked down at my sketchbook and thought...

...what a waste of time. I'm supposed to be an illustrator not a web developer.

So I fished around for a solution. I found RapidWeaver. I spent a whole day at work playing with it when we were quiet. RapidWeaver is a template based web design application for Mac. Actually, saying it's a design application is misleading. It's not really a design application. It's more of a content manager. They give you a bunch of templates and off you go. They are customisable up to a point (you can change the colours, whether you want the boarder on the left or the right of the screen etc) and that's what bothered me. It wasn't free enough. I wanted my website to be like my work, you know, unique (in my eyes).

Thing is though, website are not that unique. They pretty much keep to one essential layout. Header at top, navigation bar underneath or to one side etc etc... and of course this is a great thing! We know how to work this format! There's nothing worse that a page that says "How to use this site". If you need that page then you've failed as a designer. Remember all those crazy slow loading flash sites? I used to love designing those...

There I am, um-ing and ahh-ing over RW. Then I found a plug-in that let me add my own picture header. Ok, I thought, this is now looking like "mine". Then I started adding the galleries and you know what? My greatest internal fear was realised. Once I'd put my work up it looked like my site. All those hours coding was a waste. Well not totally a waste of time. I'm much better at CSS now!

RW has a built in blogging tool that allows you to put up an all singing all dancing blog much like this one. I figured this is it! I kill off this blog and I've created the site of my dreams! Just like Mr Cornell's! Everyone will love me, angels will sing, doors will open and the packed masses will carry me through the streets of London with money cascading down from the heavens!

I posted the death of this blog and played with the site all weekend posting a couple new things.

However...

All was not perfect. The new blog was giving me grief.

One of the things, as a posting artist, I love about blogger is that you post a small image on the blog which then links to the full sized file. You get the gist from the blog image but if you want to see detail (how I love the detail) you select the image. Not so in RW. I found the RW page hard to read, the fonts were too big and the spacing was all wrong. The gaps between the posts were too small. The format was too wide and strange... I fiddled with all the options and couldn't get it to work. I looked back to the blogger account for guidence and saw my old nicely ordered and spaced blog and my 100 old posts, all standing behind me like an achievement, each one giving me confidence to go on with the next.

The other thing that was troubling me was that I didn't feel free to write whatever I thought on RW. My website is my shop front. You don't air your dirty laundry in the shop in front of customers. You do it out the back where they can overhear it and giggle at the gossip.

This blog is my staff room, my fag break. I feel free and relaxed here. I can say what I think and take on all comers.

Also, especially as I'm going freelance full time in the new year, I can access this page remotely.

So I put it all back like it was! I'm keeping RW for my site because it's an awesome app for managing my images and contact details and all that shop stuff. I can have a store on there too for when I start selling prints in the future. And all for $49 (£24.99 thanks to the weak dollar. I was bought a limited edition Rage CD for more than that). If wasn't posting artwork I would definitely blog there. In fact I'm going to have a little "News" blog up there, mainly to say when I've posted new images in the portfolio section.

So that's where I'm at. Going to do some drawing now. Free at last...

The End Is Neigh!

It's sudden, but pretty final.

After 100 posts, and an awful lot of fun, it is my unfortunate duty to inform you that this Sketchblog is dead.

From now on I will be posting at my website, www.jamesreekie.co.uk rather than here.

Why? Simple. I want to keep all my posts, sketches and portfolio in the same place.

Thanks for the good times and for taking the time to read this page. Come on over and continue the fun at www.jamesreekie.co.uk.

Nuthin' but love,

Jimmy Boy Reeko

I hate Quark

I really, really do. I just can't contain my rage any longer. I just downloaded the 7.3 update and it killed my copy of Quark, so I get to write this rant whilst reinstalling the whole thing AGAIN.

Remember Quark 4? The all conquering application that was the staple for publishing printed media? I learnt Quark on 4.0 with it's weird little world of backward short cuts ("Command - E" for I-mport? who's idea was that?!) but it was the standard. You didn't question it because it's all there was. Ok, so there was page maker and the "lesser" applications like publisher but quark was king. Got my first job in a studio and bang! Quark 4, Photoshop 6, Illustrator 8, get on with it! No problemo...

Then, my missus got a job at the BBC. They had recently switched to InDesign which came with the newly released Creative Suite. She came back from training raving about it. "It's just like Illustrator but with a multi page layout!" she cried as if she'd died, gone to heaven and been pulled back to earth to be told "Yes, Earth and Heaven is now the same place."

See, designers love Illustrator. Why? Because it's a free creative environment. It's vector based so it runs quickly, you copy-drag ideas around a vast artboard, grabbing bits, merging and splicing at will. Quark is practically the opposite of this. Want to place a picture? Well, how big is it? Where do you want it? There? Where's that then? Which font? Nope, wrong font type can't deal with that one. Now, you want a table of information? Why would you want to change the line weight? You'll have to find my sub menus. I give you a clue, it's in the preferences that I just lost. No, wrong tool! Double clicking won't help you there! You need to hold down 5 keys to do that. Which ones? You think I'd know, wouldn't you? Oh, and I just lost where all your pictures were kept too. You'll have to import them again.

I remember the great Kevin Cornell describing designing with Quark "like trying to draw Mount Rushmore with an Etch-a-sketch" on a message board.

You see Quark wasn't designed for designers. It was designed by technicians to do a job. "Put picture here, put text here, print." I used to design (still do actually) on paper or in Illustrator and remake in Quark as it's so anti-creative. I've had to developed a new mental workflow which requires imagining the entire layout before beginning. Super annoying for a guy who likes to push things around and see where they go.

I got Quark 7 at work about a year ago. I had hoped they would take on board the threat from InDesign and add in some more creative elements. Copy dragging, outlining fonts, additional image previews, multi image importing... nope. Drop Shadows. That's what they managed. Oh and a new properties bar made utterly useless if you know the shortcuts that Quark pretty much requires you to know to use it effectively.

In fact Quark is so reliant on it's users knowing shortcuts that I know of one recruitment firm that devised a test for it's DTP applicants involving a shortcut Q&A, i.e. "Centre text. A: Shift-Alt-M, B: Shift-Alt-C..." and handed you a print out and an unplugged keyboard to "help".

To add insult to injury with Quark 7 they even managed to screw up a load of things that previously worked fine. My version has never imported pdf's consistently and struggles with rendering CMYK .eps and .tiff files to the same colour. How basic is that? How can you not fix that stuff?

So why don't you switch to InDesign then Reeko? Well, I can't. My boss requires me to use Quark because he doesn't want to learn InDesign. I can see it in my Dock, taunting me. Crying out for me to switch! Oh well. Quark will die soon. People will have to switch. Hopefully.

Excess

"Excess" seems to fit so nicely into a environmentally themed post.

Check it;

"One study estimated that a single transatlantic return flight emits roughly half the CO2 emissions produced by all other sources (lighting, heating, car use, etc.) consumed by an average person yearly."

One thing that's amazed me, whilst doing a little browsing, is how many people seem to believe that Global warming is an invention of the media. Now, I'm no scientist (really? no kidding...), but I can't buy that all the fumes from our power stations/cars/aeroplanes are having no effect. Also cutting down all the trees on this planet... good plan? Hmmmm. Digging giant holes in the ground to put all our rubbish in. Not really a long term solution is it?

I hope global warming is a load of scare mongering, I really do! That means that the ice caps won't all melt and my children will definitely have a nice future on a nice planet. In the mean time, however, I'll be using public transport, recycling my waste and watching what I buy. Even without Global warming, all of the policies and practices that are being put in place because of it can't be a bad thing.

The Castle

I've been thinking today.

"What about man?"

I was thinking about the world, about all it's problems, about the guy who cheated his way into line at the generic coffee shop and I came to a conclusion.

"What was that man?"

Well I thought... screw 'em.

I'm going to build me a castle. It's going to have massively thick wall and a moat full of monsters who breath fire from their nuclear charged anuses.

"Hold on a sec? They breathe from their asses?"

Ok, look it's my castle and my monsters, ok? It's not like I'm Darwin or someink?

"Take a chill pill..."

Now back to my castle. In the Gate house I will have an army of goblins, bred specifically to kill anyone who isn't me. I will, of course, teach them to leave alone my army of servants who will all be trained ninja so I will never hear or see them as they tend to my every wish or command.

"Ninjas?"

Yeah, man, it'd be awesome! You just shout "beer!" and then... Whoooooosh! One would just slide done the table, uncorked by the swish of a katana! Hoovering would just be an occasional swish as dust was destroyed! Food would be scared into being done!

"Hang on, isn't that how Chuck Norris cooks?"

Chuck? Well he'd be my Sherif! He'd be off kicking Kevin Costner's ass. Now for the good stuff...

The Keep would be a giant tower with all your usual Cribs trappings, giant fish tanks, bowling lanes, throne room, damsel-in-distress-window-seats, Lincoln Navigator... and of course the dungeon for people who really hacked me off.

Now, let's get a couple things straight this castle is there to keep all you monkeys out and me in in my own little wonder world! It's a bit "Neverland Ranch" I know, but unlike Michael I've had it hard and so know the value of money. I don't need a Zoo, I have my goblin army to keep me entertained. They come cheep because they eat each other and breed faster than amoeba so they'll pay for themselves. Chuck of course would come at a pretty penny but then I could always just keep him so drugged up on killing Merry Men that he'd never know all that cash wasn't going into his off shore bank account.

Right, I suppose I'd better go apply to Hammersmith and Fulham council and see if they'll let me build it on Shepherds Bush green. I don't want to be too far out of town after all...

Oh and I'll get the pitch ready for Dragon's Den. They are just going to love it!

Business Card

I was typesetting a business card this afternoon.

Copy

Highlight

Paste

Copy

Highlight

Paste

Oops, Mutha F*...

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

Look at what I made this poor lady's job title into!


Monday's nearly over!

Calendar

I don't tend to post my design work here, mainly because this was supposed to be my sketchbook blog but also because the majority of the work I do for my day job totally sucks.

This job started off sucking majorly too. I did this calendar last year (the first year of design hell) and it was... ok. It's for the maintenance section of a large developer of key worker living. It features pictures of workers messing around the office and it's a cute little job but not exactly cutting edge design...

This year however I've been gifted with this photo of the "I.T. team" (love the fact they're called a "team". Could they give the A team a run for their money? You betcha sweet little *ss!). Great photo, great colours, wonderful expressions!

Wish the rest of the photos were as good! Sadly that is not the case as I had nothing to do with taking them. Maybe next year... I won't be here! Wooo hooo!

Nearly home time...

Sadness

Sadness hits me like a wave. Not a big wave, more like a slow small one that keeps coming with a massive undertow.

I don't know If that's possible. I'm a city boy. I don't get waves. One time, I had to be rescued from a beach in Cornwall for swimming in the wrong part of the sea and I couldn't get back to land. This lifeguard, younger than me, tanned and with surfer hair, pulled me out of the water and took me back to land. I was so scared, confused and embarrassed that I paddled like crazy as we coming into the beach because if I helped him, he wasn't saving me and none of my pride was hurt.

It was hurt, destroyed. I was terrified. I couldn't cope. The waves were way too strong for me.

So, as you may have gathered from this I'm not very good at asking for help. That has lead to the situation I'm in at the moment, at the job that I just can't stand anymore. I don't think it's the sole reason but it's a major one. Pride and front are big factors in this too. I get confused about how to use them to my advantage.

I guess it's because through a lot of my life I've been fine. I've muddled through. I'm confident in conversation, I make friends easily and I'm intelligent enough where it matters for most situations.

I've spent the last 4 years getting knocked. I could do with a pick up.

I need some help. I just don't know what kind.

Scale

So, I live in London. It's a big arsed congested stinky city.

In said big arsed city I have to take buses and tubes to get around. The tube is over 150 years old (ish)and looks and feels like it and the buses are the worst form of transport known to man. What is it about buses that attracts the crazies and the mentalists? Oh, yeah, that's right, that's the only way they can get around. But why do the have to sit next to me and twitch and shake and sing and talk to the whole world about how crappy life is. Hang on...

Now we're agreed that this blog is the equivalent of the crazy stinky old man on the bus we can get into the meat of this rant. Judging. One of the advantages of public transport is you get to mix with, observe and sentence thousands of people on face value and their behaviour in the 10 or so minutes that you share the same air in a confined space.

With the current obsession in the media with weight in this country, and given the tiny space allotted to each human on public transport, the fatties of this city tend to attract the worst looks. Yup, don't pretend you haven't raised eyebrows and winced when a 20 stone chunker slams down next to you in the only seat available (well, ok, on the seat and you and your neighbour). The natural reaction, well, to me anyway, is to mentally slap yourself around and say to yourself "look, it's probably glandular or genetics and it's not their fault but hang on isn't that three packets of biscuits and a burger in that bag, what are you going to do, like, die if you don't get enough sugar in you before we get to your stop, don't you know there are people starving in..."

Assumption is the mother of all, well, human interaction and judging people is quite rightly frowned upon but almost impossible to stop in the confines of our own heads. We shouldn't give in to these unfounded rages and always try to challenge them and weigh them up against fact and rationality.

And try not to mutter "if I can't get on this crowded bus because of you, fatty..." too loudly at the bus stop.

Uncertain Under The Sea

Inspiration has been a little lacking this week, motivation similarly hiding nowhere to be found. I had some bad news, work wise, this week and it's taken me a few days to get my mojo back.

So what went wrong? Tell ya what, track me down and buy me a beer. I'll explain everything.

(Click... fizz...)

A corona? How did you know?! Right then...

I tried to run before I could walk. Took the stabilisers off too soon.

This blog (May 2007) marks the start of me trying to "make it" again as an Illustrator. Again. What happened the first time? Well...

I graduated 4 years ago and spent a couple years running around the industry like a headless chicken, pushing my drawings very badly but getting some (and some paying!) work but not enough to live and nothing with any ...profile. I drew some cartoon koi carp once. One was eating celery.

So, I quit Illustration. I kept drawing but stopped pushing my work. I moved into London and got a job as a Graphic Designer and Pre-press Operator which I hate. I concentrated on pouring out my rage into the pages of my sketchbook as I dealt with the long commute.

Then I moved further into town and cut down the commute. I found drawn. I started this blog and it gave me hope. Each post was and still is a victory. My attitude became "Even though I'm broke and my job sucks I achieved today because I posted a drawing".

Then, because I'm me, I started getting over confident. As an Illustrator, the style of my images are still newly borns, clumsy and unfocused collages and confused ink drawings. But I wanted to start getting out there again! So, a couple weeks ago I started sending out some brochures, printed at work for free, to agents and art directors, I entered Images 32 and figured I was a shoe-in.

I started getting the rejections immediately. Last week I found out I didn't make it into Images. Gutted? You betcha...

So I fished around for some inspiration and found this guy. Rory Blyth's writing is raw, crazed and angry in all the best ways. He made me realise that I've been missing a trick. Honesty. I should stop trying to be whatever I think I should be this week and concentrate on image making from me. How I see things, my interpretations. I decide what's finished and unfinished, what an image should and shouldn't be about.

My personal interpretation is all I have to sell and if I don't focus on that I have nothing. My rejections are a blessing.

I will work on me first. The outside world can wait for later.

Stabilisers back on, water wings re-inflated, I pick up my pen. There's work to be done.

Tube Strike and Strife

Apologies for the slight lack of posting. I would have liked to get a couple more in this week but events here in London have conspired against me.

First there was the tube strike. The only real Union with any power that manages to affect my life in an incredibly destructive way hit again this week with the (almost) total shut down of the tube network. I rely on the Central Line to get me across town every day from my hobbit hole flat to my place of day-job work. They shut this line completely. They also shut every other line heading east into town.

This meant I was left with two options, the bus or the walk. Now, the thing is there is no bus that covers the same distance and direction as the tube does. I had to get three buses to cover the same ground. Oh and did I mention that along with myself there were 3 million other displaced passengers?

So I fought my way onto bus number one to get home on evening one of the strike. The strike started at 4pm. I made it home around 10pm after getting frustrated, walking vast distances and stopping occasionally for alcoholic courage to continue my journey. I awoke tired and muzzy headed from the night before to begin another refugee style push, shove and squeeze journey back across town. Once again I estimate that around various bus journeys I walked a good 3 miles to speed things up.

The only problem with walking 3 miles around town was that after a few pints on my way home the night before I managed to drop the biggest cooking knife we have onto my bare right foot point first. Ouch. You know that phrase "a stabbing pain"...


So I blame the unions for my foot, my current state of tiredness, the screws up I made at work today because I was tired and my lack of posts on my beloved blog. So I painted this;


Not sure it's a great image and not sure I should really be drawing pictures of crashing trains since I take one everyday and fate has a habit of biting people in the arse.

Anyway, I don't believe in all that rubbish.

Now, where's my receipt for that armoured suit...?

Ever heard of "The Bus"? Well, there's this bus, right. It's fallen off a cliff and is heading, at speed, to a fiery death. Now, everyone gets their own bus and can put whomever they like on the bus as it heads off the cliff. People you may like to put on your bus could maybe be annoying celebrities, someone who cut you up in traffic, that guy who sits next to you on the tube and eats a Big Mac, spraying you with burger juice... I had to use Vista again the other day. Bill Gates? He's on my bus.

So if I was succumbing to all of the pent up commuter rage inside me, I would put every man women and child who went on that strike and messed up my life for 3 days in the train in my painting heading to their deaths. I'd need a train for them all, rather than a bus, due to volume.

Bit harsh, really, so I won't.

At least, not this time! Apparently they might strike again next week. Make sure you check back to see what kind of drunken injury I can do to myself then and if I give in to rage and send that train off a cliff after all...!

Oh, and to clear up another question, I don't think they really do have children working on the underground. I mean, I've no idea what goes on after 12.45am and before 4.30am, but I can honestly say I've never seen any children working during the day...

Attacking Hands

How's this brown? Ok? Oh I give up. This sketch turned up this week, not sure from where, not sure why I feel like I'm being attacked from all sides! Not even sure if the silhouette is supposed to be me to tell you the truth. The real issue for me was how realistic I should make the hands. I started off drawing them a little wildly, always a big mistake for me as I have a tendency to go overboard with the exaggeration.

A very tricky thing exaggeration. Especially for a sketch monkey like me who flits between caricature, cartoons, and arty-er illustration styles entirely dependent on mood. Hands, especially, are a battle ground for me, one that I'm never quite sure I'm winning. Whilst playing around with hands and arms lately, a devise that's really interesting me, I drew this hand that I'm completely passionate about.



Now the reason I feel I've cracked it with this one is that the balance between simplification, exaggeration, and realism is bang on. It's not a realistic hand by any stretch of the imagination, but it does conform to a hand's proportions and potential mannerism's and movements.

The main sketch features loads of hands drawn in all possible styles and, to be honest, with all possible successes! I think if I was to attempt this drawing again, and I'm quite tempted to, I think I'll try to add in a load more hands, more hands than arms in fact, and really try to keep an even treatment in the style of them.

There, I think I've nailed what's wrong with it now. And I've just looked at the clock. I've been whittering on about hands at 5 to one in the mroning on a Sunday night. Yes , obsession has finally sunk in. I'm quitting and going to bed.

Goodnight!

P.S. I'm going to dream of hands all night now...

Different Colours of Brown

I'm at work. I'm bored at work. So I decided to have a look at my own blog, you know, to try and look at it and be objective with the work. You know what my first impression is? How many different colours of brown can I fit onto one page?!

The sketchbook I use for much of my drawing (I also have a moleskine for ideas and thumbnails) is made of parcel paper. I like it because you really have to go at with the pen to create dark lines and because it's so absorbent you have several levels of black line to play with. To create a really heavy shadow you to really work at it and I feel that adds to the intensity of the drawing.

Now when I scan my drawings I keep the settings exactly the same for consistency. Where I go wrong is when I crop the image down in Photoshop I start messing around in curves to even up the ink lines. I then open up the blog window and colour match the two images together on screen. Evidently this isn't working, although the Money Men came out pretty well, not too uneven.

Bear with me, I'll keep at it.