OctJitsu Man and OctoDragon

I designed these for Guam-based fightwear company Competidor Brand. OctJitsu Man is a t-shirt on either white or black and OctoDragon is a desktop wallpaper.

3200x2400 size version here:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7001/6735814283_9ac993fcbf_o.jpg

They were both really fun projects to work on. Read on for more details on how I produced these...

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!


:)

A Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who enjoyed my artwork and bought apparel featuring my designs. It really is a massive thrill when you have folk saying how much they like your work and even parting with their hard earned money to hire me as an illustrator. I know I'm very fortunate. Lots of good things to come in 2012 and I'll update on here with all the latest Meerkatsu art, design and illustration. Cheers y'all!

:)

Tengu

Tengu is a Japanese mythological creature usually attributed with shape shifting abilities and general trickery/ I thought it would be a lovely creature to draw with all the feathers flying around and supernatural whizz effects I could add to it.

You can download in super high resolution for free as a desktop wallpaper here:

1. Normal screen aspect ratio (4:3):
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7012/6557137187_0b63ca1e35_o.jpg 

2. Wide screen aspect ratio (16:9):
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7153/6557137197_a2d64e1db6_o.jpg

The  artwork began life as a random pen sketch in my notebook. I just wanted to test out my new pigment fineliners to see how thin I could draw the barbs in the feathers:

I asked my buddy over at Scramble, who design all sorts of cool Japanese themed apparel, for some words in kanji, and voila, lots of inking up with pens, a bit of Photoshop trickery and there you have it, Tengu!