Yesterday morning, at the stroke of the deadline bell (11am), I handed in my drawing of a bottle of wine for today's Weekend section of the WSJ. With the sketch enthusiastically approved a couple of days before, I thought I had a nice relaxing rest of the day lined up.Now, I'm not a wine drinker, unless someone pours me a glass and sticks it in front of my face and proposes a toast that I can't resist. (I've been told it's bad luck to toast with San Pelagrino). I guess I should have recognized that the wines listed were all red wines. And would "first growth" be beaujolais? Maybe I should have researched this but I thought it was generic and went with the color I like best, the softly green cast of white wine.A short while after hearing from the art  director (Matt Weber, great guy..!) that he liked the drawing, I got another call that it had to be red wine,  Gasp.

So, I made the color changes and sent it back in record time.

Then there was a pause. I didn't hear from him right away. He's very responsive and their deadline was getting really really close. Then the email that I dread. They had to make changes there because the bottle shape was also incorrect.

I called back and asked if I could do them myself. He was happy to have me try but only had a small window. Can you spell adrenalin? Can I? Is it with or without an "e"?All's well that prints well. I got it back to him on time and I think it's in today's paper. Haven't had the chance to go to the newsstand yet.

They didn't use the image online, but did put the border I made for the accompanying chart. The job was fun. The rush was a good jolt and I learned my lesson to not assume anything about wine or subjects I don't know well.

I had a lot of fun drawing the bill which was used for the chart and part of the label. And figuring how to get it wrapped.

This isn't going to get into any annuals, but I still enjoyed creating it.