Driving down the road, you pass Rob Cameron’s work every day. The 39 year old is a design manager for a major Detroit automotive manufacturer, overseeing a team of five designers and a sculpting group to develop future automobiles. While his impressive designs may be parked in your very own driveway, you’ll definitely be interested in displaying his stunning side hustle in your bar.
At the height of the pandemic, while on paternity leave for the birth of his second daughter, Cameron needed a creative outlet more than ever. Hunkered down in his home office in the idle hours after the kids were bedded down resulted in extra pours from his collection of 200-plus bottles of whisky. Eying a bottle of Mayor Pingree’s Black Label 13 year old bourbon, he sketched it out one night.
“I love Mayor Pingree,” Cameron says of Valentine Distilling’s offering. “It’s a Detroit whiskey— it’s sourced, but aged in Michigan. It’s well-blended and crafted and everyone around here loves this bottle.” His drawing took several hours, “and several pours. I always drink what I’m drawing,” and he tossed it on his Instagram account, “Meeting Minutes,” dedicated to his sketches.
That post took off like wildfire, Cameron recounts, his inbox blowing up with print seekers. Cameron’s unique black pen-only style works especially well for all 28 iconic bottles he’s since sketched— and sells through an Etsy storefront, starting at $35 per print. But that distinctive style has been honed for more than a decade, often during work meetings.
Interested in art since he was a kid, Cameron “was always doodling. In church, in the car, the library, wherever. I’d fill up pages with artwork just to keep my mind occupied,” he says. A graduate of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, he continued this passion even after his stint at a car company began back in 2011.
“I carry a Moleskine notebook and a Uni-ball gel pen everywhere I go,” Cameron says. “In any meeting, I’m drawing abstract randomness of flowing shapes and ink. My coworkers and friends kept saying I had to do something with these sketches.” In 2019, Cameron scanned several pages to curate a mural for a contest to adorn a wall in his company’s new design center. “I was selected, and we created this huge wall, which was awesome. I was asked for a name and came up with ‘Meeting Minutes.’”
While perfecting his visual style, Cameron was also laying the foundation for his whisky collection. “After college, there was a lot of Crown Royal and ginger ale, but I quickly got past the purple bags,” he laughs. After dabbling with scotch— “I’m not crazy about peat, though I like a Laphroaig”—his palate gravitated toward bourbons and high-rye ryes. “Whisky’s an onion; there’s always another layer to discover. Once you start, you can’t stop.”
His bottle sketches follow his whiskey discovery journey in linear fashion. “After Mayor Pingree, I drew five more bottles that I loved: Weller 12, Blanton’s, Angel’s Envy rye, Old Forester Barrel Strength, and Stagg Jr.” Each drawing takes Cameron between six and eight hours to complete, and is a combination of pen and paper with light digital finessing. “You can correct elements from the pen sketch, or give some funky detail digitally,” Cameron explains, noting he manipulates the shading or brings more white space to an image to make it read stronger and give more depth.
When satisfied with the final visual, each piece is printed, numbered, and hand-signed. Only 150 prints are available for any given drawing. “The intent is to keep it in limited offerings, like many of these whisky bottles,” Cameron adds. “After 150, I’ll create a new piece to keep it fresh.”
The industry’s reception has been as impressive as Cameron’s art. “Wes Henderson, founder of Angel’s Envy, reached out, and two months later I was in his distillery on a release day, giving him a print,” Cameron says. “He gave me a signed bottle of rye as a thank you.” Cameron’s initial Mayor Pingree sketch now hangs behind the bar in Valentine Distilling’s tasting room. After winning a bourbon heritage competition helmed by Old Elk, Cameron flew to Colorado to meet master distiller Greg Metze and received a six-bottle run of a custom expression that he created alongside Metze. “This was an insane experience,” he smiles. “To meet a hero like Greg was the best thing ever.”
The public is equally enamored, flooding Cameron’s Instagram and website, getmeetingminutes.com, with messages. He’s completed a slew of commissions, including a 1970s bottle of Old Grand-Dad inherited from the client’s recently deceased grandfather. “It was sealed, so if and when that bottle ever opens, he’ll have this artwork to always remember the bottle,” says Cameron.
Another fellow who sought a drawing of Smoke Wagon’s Uncut and Unfiltered sent Cameron three unopened bottles to use as muses. “Those bottles were the hardest to draw,” Cameron recounts. “They’re dark, the bottle is a simple shape, with an excessive amount of elaborate detail. Illustrating a cylinder with all these details in the glass in my style was difficult,” adding it took him 12 hours to complete the sketch. The drawing turned out beautifully, and his extra labor was rewarded by the client, who told him to open and enjoy the bottles.
His favorite bottle to sketch? Old Forester Birthday bourbon. “Car designers love shapes, and that bottle is one of the most uniquely shaped on the market,” he explains. “It affords more interesting reflections due to how light interacts with the glass. Like with cars, that allows you to be more fluid, and it works very well in my style.”
Expect new prints to spring up on his site every month or so, all reasonably priced. For Cameron, “Meeting Minutes is about funding my daily drinking habit,” he smiles. “It’s nice to be able to buy bigger bottles that I wouldn’t be able to on my regular paycheck.”
