Well. we will be using the term 'teach' very loosely today. A couple of months ago my best friend and award winning designer Bryant called me up and told me about this poster he was working on. He had a concept and some illustrations that he had created but was having some trouble with one piece in particular... a giant pair of scissors.

Our first hurdle was finding a perfect pair of scissors. They had to be silver, "antique looking" and GIANT. I searched the prop shops here in St. Augustine and Bryant went through the thrift stores in Jacksonville with a fine tooth comb... after weeks of searching he finally found stumbled across the perfect set of scissors in his mother-in-law's sewing room. As soon as he got home he sent me an image of what he needed:

I setup a simple seamless background and took several photos of the the scissors. It took me several iterations to get the light, opening, angle and the contrast right. 

Bryant took the image of the scissors, flipped it and used it as a reference as he illustrated it by hand... I want to point out, there is no Photoshop shortcut for this kind of thing... it took him about 8 hours of drawing lines and shapes until it is perfect. He then added this single element to the other 30 or so items that he had created and arranged on the poster. As you can see from the final shot, it is epic:

Take a second and bend your mind around all of the detail in this image that he hand drew. Awesome right? 

I hope seeing this poster inspires you to go out and create something you love... if you hit a hurdle, call a friend and put your heads together.  Make it awesome.