New Project - Anti-Bullying Tee shirt line

Hello.  It's been a little longer than I'd like (almost two weeks), however, I'm back.  A project that I've been working on recently is an anti-bullying campaign, tee shirt line.  From time to time, I design tees for a small textile outfit by the name, Spare Change 21 (owner, Deb Waibel).  Deb contacted me with an idea; to produce a line of tees for young kids called the Mirror Image Project.  Here's what it's about: tee shirts with both a positive esteem building message and other designs with an anti-bullying theme.  Altogether, I designed the campaign's logo, 10 tees, and a brochure to send to buyers.  Here are a few examples from the pamphlet....

Page - explaining what the project it about.

One of the "U do U - I'll do Me" designs

"Imagine A World Without Bullying"

I like designing tees for Spare Change 21.  To start with, I may or may not have a theme or do some demographic research and go with my own ideas.  I start sketching with a pencil and paper - working out design ideas.  I take the sketches that I like and scan into Photoshop.  From the relatively loose sketch, I work out the design, in color, and into a complete piece of artwork.  The finishing touch is placing the design onto a tee shirt template - so it (kind of) looks like a real tee shirt.  

One of the Tee mock-ups

Once we had a collection of tees and were ready to go to the clothing buyers, I designed a pamphlet for SC 21 to send out to her contacts.  I designed the look and feel of it, and laid it out in Adobe In Design.  I exported the final product as a PDF - a PDF version that's emailable, yet high enough quality to look good printed on a color laser printer.


If you have any question about the Tees, I'd be happy to field them, or you can Google, Spare Change 21 and contact the company directly (they'll be happy to hear from you, I'm sure).

Have a great week....I'll be back with more in about a week from now.

Aloha,

Tom
  

Mirror Image Project Logo

Clay Matthews Illustration

Here's the latest piece that I've created.  It's an illustration featuring the Green Bay Packers star linebacker, Clay Matthews.  It's simply titled: Matthews.

One of the subjects that I really enjoy is sports, and in particular; Football.  As a native of Wisconsin, I grew up a die hard Packers fan.  So I try to incorporate that interest into my artwork.  Right now, the Packers are in the NFL playoffs, so personally, I'm excited about that, (we'll see how far they go:) ).

Here's the artwork:

I used a technique that I've sort-of developed and enjoy using quite a bit now days.  I start out with my layout and complete a decent looking pencil sketch.  Scan the sketch and set it up on a "canvas" in Photoshop.  At this point the sketch looks pretty rough - so I refine the sketch by painting it in Photoshop.  I use a Wacom tablet attached to my computer to do the painting.  With the cordless pen, I can draw and paint with the feel of a "real" pen in my hand.
Later, I start working different layers (above and below the layer with the primary image).  On one layer I added a little color to the helmets and jerseys.  On other layers I work patterns and textures in to give the piece some depth and vairied greens in the background that I want.  I probably worked in about 10-12 layers, including text layers.  Throughout the process I'm adjusting and trying out various effects; textures, fills, brush settings, opacity settings....there's so much to play with and experiment with when putting a piece like this together.
In the end - the artwork has evolved into the artwork you see above.  I hope you enjoy it and Go Packers!!

If you'd like to contact my, you can send me an email at: Tom.Kbrink@gmail.com
You can see more of my illustrations and artwork at  www.behance.net/tk-art

My New Blog

Hello Everyone.  

I'm Tom Kbrink (real name - Tom Kreienbrink), and welcome to my blog.  I'm a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.  

This is my first blog.  So, what do I want to do with this blog?  Well, of course I want to show the world what I do, especially people who would be interested in hiring me.  I also want to make this a fun, informative, sometimes serious...something that hopefully you'll want to read and enjoy looking at.

So what do I do?  I'm an Illustrator, Artist, and Graphic Designer.  I do Commercial Illustration (color, and black and white), using computer and traditional media techniques.  I use the Adobe Creative Suite (mostly Photoshop, Illustrator, and In Design).  I produce artwork for print media, the web and multimedia, presentations, or whatever else.  (check out my website-portfolio at www.behance.net/tk-art )
I'm an artist for hire as well - portraits or other custom fine art that you may want produced.

I'll leave it at that for now.  If I set this up correctly - my email, web-portfolio, and all the contact info you need should be available - if you're interested in my artwork.

I hope you enjoy my blog - I'll try to be faithful and keep it fun and interesting (and hopefully a little educational as well).  Thanks and please come back soon.