Behold! A detail from a recent t-shirt design I drew. Used a digital “scratchboard” technique on this one. Actually, I’ve used that on several of my most recent jobs; I’m really enjoying the look and feel of that technique.
Click on the image to see a more detailed closeup.
Got commissioned recently to do this mascot illustration for the Crimson Kayaker blog. Then I started thinking, “Dang. How big would a kayak have to be for an elephant to fit in it?” I’m thinking that sucker would have to be a converted 35-foot cabin cruiser. And the blades on the paddle would be the size of dinner tables.
But, then again, I have been known to overthink things sometimes.
This is my son’s fifth year of basketball, and his team this time around is the Sharks. So I whipped up a mascot logo for them, doing the rough sketch in Photoshop first…
…and then working up the tight final art in Illustrator. Voila!
As you know, if you’ve followed my blog for long, I really have no interest in spectator sports, but I DO love mascots and cartoons. So when an idea pops into my brain for a toon, I draw it, sports related or not.
And sometimes, I sell it!
My son is playing his first year of basketball on our church league. Their team name is the Gators, so I whipped up a quick mascot drawing for them.
I chose to do the animal gator, because I figured it was safe to assume that my church wasn’t referring to the 1970s Burt Reynolds movie Gator when they named my son’s team. Then again, you never know……naming them after the movie would explain why they included a fake mustache and sideburns as part of the required uniform.
As I said in the previous post, my pen is now in mascot mode, hence the football-playing bulldogs of today’s offering.
I am experimenting with different approaches to the same character, and I was wondering if you, the reader, had a preference. I feel like the first one is too cliché, a mere rehashing of the same old bulldog everyone uses. I prefer the second one myself, since he’s a bit more original. I also like his solidity. To me, he looks like the one voted “most likely to take a direct nuclear hit and walk away from it unscathed” by his fellow classmates at mascot obedience school.
Let me know what you think.
Awhile back, I was contacted by a guy who said he was interested in having me redesign the mascot for a sports talk radio show. I haven’t heard back from him, so I guess they lost interest. It reminded me of my early days when I did a lot of college mascot work for merchandising companies and universities, though, and how much I enjoyed that kind of work.
It wasn’t the sports aspect (I’m not exactly what you’d call a huge fan of any team or sport), but the fun things I got to draw the characters doing. Lots of action and cartoon violence kinda stuff. You know, the kind where anvils, being tied to train tracks, and things marked “ACME” come into play quite often.
So- now that my doodling pen is fired up for some sports mascot action but has been put on standby- what’s a guy to do????
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