development sketches of ideas

 Below are some initial idea sketches:

This design i feel would work for a craft beer e.g. 'Bowa Beer' but for a spirit or wine i don't think it would suit. This initial design was inspired flash tattoo drawings and i wanted to encompass a living and a dead aspect, hence the skull and the snake.  

this design was a follow on from the Bowa Beer and instead of the skull i added a sword and changed to a vodka, naming it Venom Vodka as i was going for an aggressive and mean feel. 

this design i wanted to be called poison as i wanted it to be a very strong and lethal spirit for young adults. the design i don't think would work for a label but the concept was to create a label with a sense of danger.  

this wasn't a finished design but i was drawing skulls to try and get a feel for the style i wanted to go in. this particular skull i thought could have elements coming out of the open hole.

After these initial concepts I wanted to take the next few design concepts in the grim reaper direction and then try some traditional tattoo styled drawings. 

this was the initial gin reaper design. i thought it worked well but the blade was to straight and wanted to curve it round or have something enclosing the design into a circle - like barbed wire or rope. 

this design of the gin reaper i tested out the barbed wire idea and felt it worked but took away from the reaper as to fit on the label it ad to be smaller and therefore couldn't see the reaper as well. 

for this reaper i got rid of the wire and curved the blade more to create a circular form which could fit on the label better. i also thought of adding a strap line as well as the title but i felt it crowded the label too much. 

this design was inspired by traditional American tattoos and i was thinking of having a patriotic American sailor. i decided against this as it had been done before by sailor jerry whiskey but with pin up girls and i wanted to create a label which was in my own style.