Red Thread Redemption

This is a logo I designed for a Christian T-Shirt company called "Red Threads". This is something I've been working on since May and it has taken on many different styles of variations and style within that time. The client was looking for something hip, distinct and "comic book-like". That last one had me a little nervous as "comic book style" can mean different things to different people, as comics are just as diverse in their appearances, techniques and styles as any other medium of art. But really, what I was more concerned about was that a detail oriented "comics style" would clash with the needs of a logo, which needs to be simple, identifiable and legible even when shrunken down.

Here are some previous variations just to give you a hint of the process.

Rogers House

I actually started on drawing this house before I started the Eisley House, so I learned a few things in the process. Here, the trees so close to the actual house I had to be careful about applying detail so as not to make it appear that the foliage was swallowing the building itself. I did my best to balance things out my putting the darkest darks in the corners and especially on the far right, while also plotting negative space on the left hand side in the driveway, the bushes on front lawn and the tree by the garage.

If I were to do this again, I'd have done less of this "brush strokes as leaves" approach and maybe go with something more akin to Franklin Booth and render the canopy with of varying degrees of cross hatching. As is, its pretty easy to lose the point were one tree ends and another one begins. That might have also lent a more uniform look to the picture what with the linear nature of the house. Then again, I had originally drawn the grass on the front lawn in a very Booth-ish style which my client didn't seem to care for, so I changed it to the kind of style I did with the Eisley's house.

Eisley House

 I was fortunate to be discovered by two families recently who are selling their houses and wanted a keepsake of their former homes. This is the first, I hope to get the finer details worked out with the client of the second one soon.

Back when I was in high school, I had a little side business of drawing houses in some of the more affluent neighborhoods. My rates were extraordinarily cheap, but looking back, these pictures weren't all that great. I had no sense of economy whatsoever and drew every blade of grass equally.

Here I used a pen that was almost out of ink and ran it very quickly across the lawn to give it a sense of substance but also convey that it was neatly mowed. I had a lot of fun rendering that kooky cloud as well. I original started shooting for a fluffy Franklin Booth cloud but ended up with this hatchy Bernie Wrightson formation that I think works better in this piece, especially with all the line work going on already.