People constantly need free artwork for T-Shirts, and that is the kind of work I need to pay the bills. Since I have a computer, it should only take me a couple of minutes, anyway. Best of all, since it is free, people will get to tell me to change one hundred little things that will only take a second, since I did it on a computer.

First, I sketched out a quick design that I wanted to have approved before I spent even one of the two seconds I was going to spend on this job. Since it was for free, I only supplied one idea. The Haymaker is a fall tournament for high school boys’ lacrosse. The shirt would be a fundraiser that would hopefully get  16-18 year olds to cough up some money to buy a shirt. It could not endorse violence, but had to appeal to the aggressive nature of the sport. The name encompassed a full swing of a lacrosse stick, a wild punch, and the time of year it will be played. I focused on the Harvest/Halloween time of year, and wanted to somehow get a screaming character into the artwork. The lacrosse ball would be my main focus of the illustration.

Reference for Scarecrow Face

A happy Scarecrow wasn’t going to cut it, so I used the Disney Movie The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh as a reference to the screaming ball. I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid and the mask and voice scared the hell out of me.

Initial detail sketch of the scarecrow ball illustration

Above is a more detailed sketch for the lacrosse ball, which I then photographed and traced in illustrator.

Vector artwork of Lacrosse ball

Once the face was finished, I created a new file and began to build the rest of the shirt. I wanted to keep it as a 3-color job, so I built the entire thing in Black and white to begin with. Once the text and hay artwork was done, I pasted in the lacrosse ball, and the stick was from a logo I did a couple years ago.

The final color version of the Shirt Graphic

There are many things that I would have wanted to changes if I was to do it all over again. The Haymaker type would be curved along the bottom to match up with the curve of the banner, the hay would not actually be wheat, and the lacrosse stick would not be so two dimensional. If it was a paying job I would have taken the extra steps. But, even with the short cuts, I had close to 12 hours of time into the job—a small price to pay.

Tags:   graphic design · lacrosse tournament t-shirt · T-Shirt Design