The Basset Hound Rescue of Georgia referred me to The Boston Terrier and Pug Rescue of Southern Manitoba in Canada, who recently contacted me for a shirt commission. The shirt was for their annual Manitoba Basset Hound Walk, with all shirt proceeds going to the rescue, which is another 501(c)(3) organization.
The client did not have specifications for the event further other than that the event name needed to be present on the shirt. Wanting to further the illustrative directions I've explored with the past few shirt commissions I've done, I decided early on I wanted to explore character development styles. The biggest concern that I had in doing another basset shirt was how do I create another basset character that does not look like characters I developed for other clients? That was really important to me, that I did not recreate the same design for similar organizations.
After a few sketches and color schemes, I finalized the design!
While working on the various basset sketches, I realized that in order to create harmony and repetition within the design, that even though the bassets were in different poses, it was important they all had the same faces, otherwise the design would not have been as strong (in my sketches below, the running sketch of the basset has a profile of the face, which you can use as reference for what I based my decision on).
I love working on shirts for rescues! Design should always inspire and better the community!
Below is process and exploration.
