Starting from a reference image of the Issue No. 12 cover, I made some very quick draft sketches to bring to the first meeting between myself and the team members in charge of producing the shirt.
Experiment 1 - Brown
Experiment 2 - Dripping
Experiment 3 - Camo
Experiment 4
After the meeting and the feedback I was given, I went off to ideate, playing around with shapes and colour more instead of staying within my comfort zone. I played around with the idea of liquifying, as the key word for the issue had been "immerse". Here are a selection of the experiments I came up with.
The team decided that the "painterly" experiment was the most interesting, and we moved forward with creating a design that combined my love of hand-drawn lines with a painterly aesthetic. We narrowed the choices down to two different busts, and I started to experiment with text placement.
Here are a selection of mockups I created with the potential designs.
Our final selection came down to two of my designs, and then we decided on one as the final. I made adjustments to the painting when we realised I had gone too dark on the skin-tone in the original design, and we discussed whether or not the dripping effect down the bust was necessary - I felt like it gave the design more interest and reflected the "immerse" theme we were following, but some team members felt it was too busy. Using that feedback, I played with the formation of the drip pattern.
The final design was printed into shirts for the whole spring 2019 Spark team, and was given away during the release party. Due to cost restrictions on the number of inks we could use, some of the colour from the design was lost, which taught me to expect changes when translating my artwork into the real world. The experience was incredible and I am so happy that my art can be seen in closets all over Texas. I am so grateful to have been entrusted with creating a piece that represents the amazing Spark Magazine's Issue No. 12!