I suppose one could chalk this up as a testament to how behind I am in blogging, but at least I’m getting around to my travels now (4am Thursday morning).

Daphyn and I managed to hit the small town of Noank (think “no + anchor”) a few weeks ago during our trip up to Connecticut. We stopped in to try the lobster at Abbott’s on the Rough. The Prince Edward Island Oysters were good and the steamers were decent, although I must confess we were a little disappointed with the lobster rolls. The town itself though was about as picturesque as can be. A few shots taken with my meager iPhone below.

If you look closely to the right you can see they serve up “conversation” with other edibles.

I don’t see signs like these in my neighborhood for some reason.

I pretty much swore off print in college after realizing I was killing too many trees during the design process, but I made a rare exception for my friends over at TorchBearer Sauces. They’re introducing a new, taller bottle for their products that makes it much easier to pour their sauce. I took a quick stab at scaling the characters from the existing bottle designs but ultimately convinced the guys at TorchBearer to let me redraw all of the labels from scratch.

I picked up a few of the newly-labeled bottles at the last Vidian (hot sauce party). Judging from some of the pictures I took (like the one above), I discovered I still have a lot to learn about my Flashbulb and white balance.

It was a fun assignment, as I don’t often get to draw really wacky characters, plus no paper was harmed in the making of the bottles (thanks to my trusty Cintiq). There are a few older bottle designs still out there (as well as a few new ones that aren’t yet out), but the new bottles should be hitting Giant Food and Whole Foods in the near future.

It’s still a little weird to see my handwriting on labels when I go through the supermarket aisles . . .