In my website you can see lots of examples with tattoo designs and logotypes that I have made. In this article I’m going to show how these drawings are created. This is going to be a step-by-step explanation of how I get from a rough idea to a finished image. This particular Maine Coon cat design was commissioned by my client, Lynda Mulheron, who wanted a logotype for their Maine Coon cattery. She wanted an image of a Maine Coon cat’s head in profile with the cattery’s name, “Gracelands,” next to it.
The first step of making any artwork is coming up with the composition. This time I sent my client two different sketches, and this is the one that she approved.
As you must have noticed, this is a really messy sketch. I’m actually perfectly capable of making neat and clean-looking sketches. When working on a piece of paper, repeated erasing damages its surface. This is why I put the effort into making my preliminary drawings neat and clean whenever I care about not damaging the paper surface. This time, however, I was making the sketch digitally in Photoshop. Thus I could afford to be lazy and just let it be messy. It didn’t matter anyway.
Next step is drawing the “fur” pattern. I prefer doing that on a piece of paper. Here you can see a photo of my drawing next to the tools that I used for making it. I used a mechanical pencil, two erasers, and two markers (one black and the other one green).
Once the drawing is done, I scan it. Sometimes I also adjust it digitally in Photoshop. Compare this image with the one before it, and you will notice that I slightly moved around some of the lines around the word “Gracelands.” I sent this image for my client’s approval, and the only change she requested was making the lines for cat’s ear tufts thinner.
Next I’m using CorelDRAW for tracing the artwork. There are numerous ways how one can draw vector curves, personally, I prefer to use the “Freehand tool.”
First, I use the “Freehand tool” to make nodes that are connected with straight lines. Next, I use the “Shape tool” to select all the nodes, convert them to curves, and separately bend each line. It is possible to automatically convert an image to vectors, but I prefer to do this job manually, as it gives me a better and more accurate result.
Once the cat was traced, I had to do the calligraphy. I did consider using an existing font. Ultimately, I decided against that, instead I made the text entirely on my own. That is 100% my own calligraphy, I didn’t use any existing fonts, I didn’t copy and trace any other calligrapher’s letters. Here’s the thing—I consider myself an artist; I believe that I don’t have a right to call myself a master calligrapher. I know calligraphers whose written texts are much better than my own, and I greatly admire their skills. That being said, I actually can do some decently good calligraphy. I have practiced it, and I know how it’s done.
Here’s how I did the calligraphy. First, notice the guidelines. Those are meant to make sure that the height and angle of every letter remains the same. Next I created the lettering with “Freehand tool” and “Shape tool.” After that I set a thicker outline width. Then I clicked on “convert outline to object.” This gave me letters with uniformly thick lines. Next I used the “Shape tool” for moving around some of the nodes in order to create a subtle contrast of thick and thin lines. This imitates the kind of look a calligrapher would get by using a dip pen with a flex nib. (Yes, I own some dip pens, and I know how to use them.) When writing on paper, a calligrapher would use a pointed nib that is flexible and comes to a sharp point. Thick and thin strokes would be achieved by varying the amount of pressure on the nib.
The text is intended to slightly resemble the English Roundhand script, but I never tried to correctly use any specific script. This is just a neater-looking version of my own regular handwriting.
Here’s the finished image. My client asked for a colored image with a black text and a silver-colored cat. For this version I used the “Fountain fill” tool to create a gradient of various grayish hues.
Of course, my client gets the images without my watermarks on them. I use watermarks for the images that I upload online in order to prevent unauthorized use of my work.
The finished images © Lynda Mulheron, my client who commissioned this logotype.
I found this very interesting. I love to learn how things are made, especially things that begin in the imagination.
Sorry to be so late with this comment, but I somehow missed this post when it came out.