Chinese Phoenix snapback

Following my excursion painting designs onto canvas shoes I bought a blank snapback from Ebay with the intention of drawing something on this too. I never got round to it and left the hat on my bookshelf for ages until a chance conversation with one of my customers gave me the inspiration to draw a phoenix on the hat.

Pug sticker

I recently asked my Facebook followers ideas for something cool to draw for a sticker design. I received hundreds of ideas but one that really caught my attention was the pug. There's nothing special about this idea more than any other, but when it was mentioned, I instantly wanted to draw the pug's face. Here's a brief rundown for my work process, which was quick by my standards.

White Tiger

I was commissioned by Swedish fightwear brand Kenka to draw a series of rashguards celebrating the four mythological animals that represent the seasons in ancient Chinese and Japanese folklore. The White Tiger is the symbol for autumn and of the west.

I began with a quick layout idea:

I wanted to evoke the flavour of some really amazing tattoo artwork I have observed of tigers and cherry blossoms, but with the twist of drawing it in my own personal style.

I chose to draw the tiger in pen first:

Then I scanned this into Photoshop, cleaned it up a little, then worked on it some more in Illustrator.

This is the bare bones tiger in vector form:

The branches bit was easy, but the cherry flowers were fiddly. I first drew some basic cherry flowers that were intact and attached to the tree branches:

Then I went to town with 3 or 4 different petal shapes, each one with a nice pink to red colour gradient, then copy and pasted them at random places:

The front panel was simpler, I reprised the tiger and played around with mirroring him along with logo placement. Same again with the sleeves.

The final result is a really neat piece of garment making in my opinion!

Photoshopping a composite together

I don't use Photoshop as much as I do Illustrator. The few functions I do use relate to a little post production work on my photography. But this weekend I was in a tight spot. I needed photographs of a person wearing my new product - a hooded top - but I was running out of time before the product went live.

The above photo was produced by compositing a photo of me onto a stock picture of a brick wall. Here's how I did it...

The curious case of the bewigged lizard

When I met black belt instructor Raphael dos Santos during my trip to Cornwall recently, we discussed the idea of a personal mascot for him. Raphael is known for his ultra low standup stance (despite a strong judo background) and it is a stance often likened to that of a lizard. I sketched out my idea of what I thought would be a cool gi wearing lizard.

I wanted to avoid any confusion of another well known BJJ lizard mascot - the one that Lucio 'Lagarto' Rodrigues uses - which can be seen here. Lagarto's version shows a lizard in upright posture.

When I scanned in the pencil sketch, I then traced over it with the pen tool in Illustrator and all was going well at this point.

I then added shading. I wanted a dark heavily shaded effect, similar to how Spiderman is portrayed in comic books.

But when I posted it on Facebook, I was quite surprised by the comments. There were at least half a dozen very immediate responses informing me that the lizard looked like he was wearing a wig. I simply could not see it myself so I dismissed it as an anomaly only a few could see.

But the comments kept coming which suggested to me that this was not the isolated prank postings of a few internet trolls but a very real problem. I examined the design again. I still was too conditioned in my mind by my concept that I could not see the so-called 'wig' until someone pointed out the spinal shading resembled a middle parting. It then hit me and I could not stop seeing the wig. It was an effect very close to observing one of the Magic Eye posters.

I felt bad that Raphael's logo might be subject to ridicule so I offered to change it (even though he said he loved it the way it was).

I removed the shading, simplified the gi lines and redrew the left arm. This broke up the head adornment effect while still maintained the posture. The end result is a vast improvement I hope.

Mind you...I now miss the wig. Who else in the BJJ world has a wigged lizard for a logo?

Canvas shoe art

I've been having some fun drawing on canvas shoes. I first came across the idea when browsing Instagram. There are a number of custom shoe artists out there and from what I can see, the concept is a very popular one.

Here is a breakdown of my experiences with drawing on shoes...

Heavenly Footlock

The Heavenly Footlock t-shirt is a collaborative project together with Tatami Fightwear, BJJHQ and 93 Brand to raise funds for the charities RAINN and Rape Crisis.

When I first began sketching down the concept, I realised quickly it would be quite a task to get it looking as technically decent as I wanted it, and I needed help too....