Water Dragons

For the last two years the company I work for has been one of the corporate sponsors for the local dragon boat races. Each year I have created a t-shirt image for our team.

The first year I looked at what the boats are like and drew inspiration from that. I came up with a pretty cool boat image.









This year I wanted to use elements from last years, Asian culture and boating. So I did the two sea dragons locked in combat around a yin-yang rotated to give the look of sky and water.
It had a life preserver feel to it so I added the dragon boat oars in the background.




















Overall I feel they are both successful images that reflect the ideas of the competition.

Shades

Shades is a character I created way back in high school. He is a cartoon character that has had many different looks over the years. I finally brought him to the computer and now he takes on different holiday looks or looks of friends. One thing I have never given Shades is a girlfriend. I have never figured out what she would look like but I am working on it.

Below are some of the variations I have created for Shades.

The original look:














Variations:

Journey or Destination

Is the end more important than the journey to get there? Or is the journey more important?

At times people focus too much on the goal and forget about the process to get there. It doesn’t matter how they get there, who they hurt or what they miss out on as long as they make the goal.

Others will focus too much on the journey and get stuck meandering around and never reaching the end. They’ll enjoy what they're doing and learn things along the way but never have the satisfaction of bringing something to an end.

I believe they are both important. You have to start with the end in mind. If you don't know where you're going, you won't know how to get there.

My art professors would talk about enjoying the feel of the brush on the canvas or the pencil on the paper. I never really understood this, as I wanted to see the final image as soon as I could. As I started to draw more I found joy in the feel of the different papers under the graphite of the pencils or the feel of clay in my hands as I sculpted. I would have a design in mind and work toward it but noticing the process made the final product much more exciting and the feeling of finishing even better.

In design it is the same. You have to plan what you want but getting to the final product is just as important. As you work to the final product you go through a process of trying and exploring different ideas. As you work through these possible solutions you may find ideas that will work for other projects. You may learn a new technique or use a new tool. But as you move forward you have to keep the end on mind, the goal.

Once you reach the goal the process is worth it. The time you take makes the final solution satisfying.