T-shirt: Skullorantula

Let me introduce my hairy little friend 'Skullorantula'. I designed him for t-shirts and the base of the design carries the Portuguese words: Guarda Aranha, which translates to 'spider guard' a popular techniques used in the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ).

Skullorantula never nearly made it to real life status. Originally, I drew him as one of a series of tee concepts for a BJJ instructor in Japan - but he chose something else instead. Below is my original sketch:

And as is evident from the final image below, I kept pretty faithful when tracing over my original pencil sketch using Illustrator:

For the final image, I used a cross hatching technique I saw somewhere else and I've been dying for an excuse to try it on a project myself. I tend to use cross hatching a lot with pen and ink artwork, but have never tried it with vector drawn work before. I think it came out ok.

For colours, I tried out a number of combinations, eventually sticking to a fairly primary range of colours plus the base t-shirt - which came in either navy, brown, maroon or black - colour that reflect (not accurately mind) the belt colours of BJJ.

For the back of the t-shirt, I always like to add a little reprise of the front design:

Possibly not one for the arachnophobes!


:)