Tuesday, November 29

Jesse Helms

I recently signed a contract with a local t-shirt shop, and it sent me scrambling.

I wanted to submit material immediately to, if nothing else, show them what I had in mind. They signed my contract without seeing as much as a doddle, so I need to prove I'm serious about this. I dug through my old newspaper art to see what I could rework into a shirt design, and I found something that sparked an idea. But for that idea, I needed to make a new piece, and I decided it would be of longtime North Carolina Jesse Helms. I found an image and recreated it, Shepard Fairey style, in Adobe Illustrator.


Now, yes, Illustrator's Live Trace can accomplish much the same thing, but I find its results to be flat. And it feels like a cheat. I was doing this kind of spot-color recreation years before Illustrator provided the same style of artwork. I like making art this way -- color field by color field -- and I think the result is stronger than what Illustrator hands you when you click the mouse. 


And here he is:




When I hear from the shirt shop (yea or nay), I'll post the final design that includes this work.

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on the contract! I love watching dreams come true!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Still waiting to hear from the gallery about my initial submissions. I'm working up new ones in the meantime. One of the next blog entries will be a procedural of a new design.

    ReplyDelete