Grizzly Bear T-Shirt Illustration
task: We'd like an illustrated mascot for our business that we can use for packaging and merchandise. Borealis Coffee Company is a small-batch coffee roaster in Riverside, RI. Our founder is from Anchorage, Alaska and the name Borealis is a tribute to growing up so far north. We'd like the mascot to be a grizzly bear.
Grizzly bear details: somewhere between a fine line illustration and cartoon; not growling, maybe looking like he's enjoying something; it could be just the bear head or the whole bear, rump sitting; we like the idea of have a landscape or some design woven into the shape of the bear. The first thing we're going to do with it an embroidered patch or hat, so the lines can't be too fine. Black and white illustration.
And I set to work.
From the very beginning we need to draw sketches:
And send them to the customer for approval.
Surely the lead was a sketch with a sad bear.
After approval of the sketch, the next step was to start drawing. Perhaps this is the most dangerous and time-consuming stage of the process. For example, I never know what the result will be. This time I tried to draw a lion. Although it was necessary to draw a bear.
I don’t know how other illustrators work. Perhaps they are not mistaken. Or maybe I`m a very bad illustrator, but this happens with me sometimes.
In the end, I painted the face of the bear again.
The task was to draw an illustration of two colors - black and white. However, I noticed that one color works fine. With the exception of white t-shirts.
When I added a second color, the bear earned both dark and light T-shirts.
We sent the drawing to the printing house to find out how it will work on the embroidered patches. Let me remind you that the original idea was to put it on baseball caps. The production office said the details, as they are now, will translate nicely into a woven patch (versus an embroidered one). The answer satisfied the customer and the work are done.
PS. If I have photos of baseball caps, I will add them to this post.
I hope it was fun, and thanks for watching :)
