In the Summer of 2012 I was asked to design a tshirt for Sheffield based band Rolo Tomassi that would be sold during their UK tour to promote their 3rd album 'Astraea'
The final thing! Was so excited to see this in real life
It was a great project to work on, and exciting that more people would see my illustrations. And also amazing to hear that so many people liked the design that I put so much into. Below are various photos & scans of the design as it developed; I don't know what else to write so enjoy the pictures!
Very rough sketches on the left, final bear illustrations on the right
I used the album title 'Astraea' as my starting point for inspiration. Astraea was the daughter of Zeus & Themis & the last of the immortals to live among humans. According to the Roman poet Ovid she abandoned the Earth; to flee from the wickedness of humanity. She ascended to heaven & became the constellation Virgo; the scales of justice that she carried became the nearby constellation Libra.
One of the tracks on the band's album was called 'Scales of Balance'; which caught my eye after reading about Astraea, so I began to draw & try to think of an interesting way to draw scales that someone would want to wear on a tshirt.
Eva, the lead singer of the band, told me about the album and that it was 'centered around light & dark' & that the band liked cosmic/ space themed things.
With that in mind I decided to add bears to the scales; a sunbear & a moonbear. I chose these two as it fitted with the light & dark contrast idea and also with the space theme.
All of this was completely hand illustrated, then the bears were cut out & added to the scales. The piece was scanned so that the contrast could be altered to make the lines more 'striking' and definite
Black & White version of the Bear idea
The Band loved the scales idea & the Bears, but asked if I could try the design with Owls. I love drawing Owls, so I drew quite a few different ones that I could scan into Photoshop then place on the scales to see which 2 suited them best and also looked good together.
I also re-drew the Typography for the final print-ready version so that it was bigger and with a capital 'R'.
Above is the final Owl version illustration, & the printed tshirt. The design was also printed onto red tshirts in cream.
