On my last update, I said that although I was happy with the way the illustration for the poster was going, I wanted to add a little more interest to the drawing, which I thought I could achieve by making it busier.

The picture above is where I got to after a few trial and error sketching sessions. Basically I have used the original drawing as a template, so no changes to the basic composition, but I've upped the number of lines used on each tuft of the beard.

It's a pretty time consuming method. Each line has to be drawn individually and you have to go steady to keep a clean, precise line. But I'm only half way through and already I think the increase in lines seems to be adding a lot more texture to the drawing. When it is finished it will hopefully help with the desired effect of a hair bombardment.

Accidents will happen, that's what they say isn't it? Well speaking with my designer hat on, I'm pretty glad that they do!

So often I've been toiling on a project, making a tweak here and a slight adjustment there, trying to make the change that takes what you're working on from the being 'okay, but not great' to the 'yes, spot on' point.

Sometimes, not always, as if by some kind of divine intervention chance offers a little helping hand! Whether it's an accidental 'apple, v' that plonks an object somewhere you would never have thought to plonk it. Or maybe a chance crop that hacks off far more of the image than you'd have thought was a good idea...

Yes, I'm talking about design accidents. They're a designers friend, some kind of fairy godmother that should be fully embraced whenever they deem it time to make an appearance.

You can't take full credit, because it wasn't strictly your idea, or an idea at all, but by jove it looks good so you're just going to roll with it.

So that's how the image above came about. It was a design accident. I can't really remember how it happened, but I always thought it looked kind of cool and thought that it'd be a good way to illustrate my point.