This one started as a passing idea while I was driving and thinking about the oddness of sport team names. I started thinking about what each Bay Area team would look like together if they embodied their name. That path of thought inevitably lead me to what a fight between these characters might be like, the giant having the seemingly obvious advantage.
I recently started my illustrating with photo-resistant blue animators pencil. It helps me to keep my early sketches looser knowing that my graphite pencil will be the tight lines. I love drawing on paper with pencils so maybe it’s just an excuse to stay on this phase longer. This piece wasn’t for a client so I could indulge myself.
This phase is just trying to keep the energy I had with my pencil work with the addition of line weight to further enhance what I already have.
As straightforward as adding flat color to a drawing can seem, it takes a lot of trial and error to find the right colors. Since the teams all have their own color schemes I wanted to use, I was mostly trying to get those colors distinct while also working alongside one another. I wanted to keep the colors bright for this one.
Another one of my favorite phases of illustration is adding the darks and lights. This is where things really start to pop off the page/screen. I also chose to change the colors of the lines to give the forms a little more individual flavor rather then uniform back which sometimes can make things feel a little flat.
The idea for this was to take the form of an 11”x17” poster so I had to figure out what I wanted to fill the rest of the space up with. I don't always do the background at the end. Most of the time it makes more sense to work it up all together. But for this one I wasn’t sure I wanted a background at all. Then, thinking it could add a bit of clarity to the illustration, I decided to go for one that was unobtrusive. I wanted the idea that they were in a sports stadium but I didn’t want the stadium to be overstated, hence the subdued palette, simple forms, and the internally cropped window. Hope you guys like it.
If you want a copy you can find them at my Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/502437072/bay-area-sports-teams?ref=shop_home_active_2
