This is the third installment in my collection (o)-bjects. The original idea was to practice drawing somewhat intricate icons. Later, I came up with the idea to contrast the simplicity of the line drawings with whimsical title styling. Probably unnecessary, but I went with the idea nonetheless.

I guess technically this is a boombox, but I liked the idea of calling it a beatbox so I could use a picture of a beet, which seems somewhat less expected. The creation of (beet)-Box utilized Illustrator’s repeating pattern functionality. For instance, the tape inside the deck is a series of tightly spaced concentric circles and speakers are made from repeating straight lines that at then masked out into circles.

Photo Credit: The picture of the beet comes from (the wonderful?) Interpretation of Dreams site. Because we all dream about beets pretty regularly. I’m guessing they themselves got the photo from another site unless they employ a cadre of in-house photographers to take pictures of beets (they have 12 beet pictures!!!!). However, I couldn’t find the original image source.

In honor of my friend Graham who loves a good Old Fashioned, I made this decorative poster. The drink itself I imported and converted using Live Trace. I reflected it and used a gradient to get the reflection, and did a little bit of blending work on the edge to make the reflection look more realistic. I used an opacity mask on the main lettering for “OLD” to get the repeating diagonal lines on the left side of the letter. The gold filigree on the border I drew by hand, which took a hot minute. I went online to try to get some idea of the Art Deco style and looked at the movie poster for the Great Gatsby. There is a faint repeating background using an ornamental shape I made. I originally intended the shape to be part of the border, but I think it turned out much better as is.