T-shirt illustration & design

Original t-shirt illustration & design for online mail order catalog company What on Earth of Hudson, Ohio. The t-shirt series I have been involved with are the continuing line of international pub t-shirts. What on Earth supplies the name of the bar and the country in which it is located, and the artist is given the task of developing the design.

The Cloud Nine illustration came to being after envisioning a goddess among the clouds, one whose hair tumbled off her shoulders to become the sky and clouds themselves. The goddess was designed with Hindu iconography in mind, and is reflected in her 6 arms and seated lotus meditation leg position. She was initially intended to be 'all-natural' (with well-placed clouds), but the company had some reservations and requested some belly-dancer pants.

In keeping with the stylized spirals given to her for cloud-like hair, I custom designed the lettering for 'Cloud Nine' to incorporate the spirals in the letterforms. The alternating rays of green and blue were intended to echo sunlight breaking behind a cloud. The Chinese pictographs are the ideograms for 'Shanghai' and 'China', respectively.

This design is one of my personal favorites developed for What on Earth, as it allowed me to incorporate elements from my non-commercial work and yet still pleased the client (and went on to sell well for them).