There are all kinds of illustration styles out there; clean, messy, modern, retro, etc… I’ve been experimenting lately with taking photos of common objects, then hand-inking them in a “messy” sort of style, and then scanning, vectorizing, and coloring them. Above is the original picture of an old 3-IN-ONE can, followed by the the hand-inked version, and finally the vectorized/colored version.
Here are a few more random items I experimented with using the “messy style”.
A friend of mine is part of a house church called The Potter’s Shed. They are planning some outreach events in the community and wanted to have a T-shirt designed that they could wear during those events. Isaiah 64:8 is a fitting passage for their ministry and provided the insight for the design: “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
I started the process by breaking out the old pen & ink set to freehand the lettering. I drew up the shed with some pottery arranged in front of it to help make it into a potter’s shed. After I was finished with the ink drawings, I scanned them into Photoshop, imported them into Illustrator, vectorized the high-resolution images, did some tweaking, and added the colors.
Here’s a color mock up of the final design shown on the back of a mocha colored shirt.
Vessel “Tree of Life” T-shirt design based on Revelation 22:1-2.
Vessel “Butterfly” girls T-shirt design.
Hello, my name is Brad Thomas and I'm a graphic designer specializing in logo and identity design. This blog is where I share the process that goes on behind some of the projects I work on, as well as other design-related insights. Comments, questions, and project inquiries are all welcome. Thanks for stopping by.
Sixty-Six Clouds is a visual exploration of word frequency in the Bible using wordle.net. The resulting word clouds quickly capture the primary themes of each of the books of the Bible at a glance. You can visit the 66 Clouds website for a categorized and interactive view of all the word clouds. Enjoy!