What Makes Me Smile When I Design?

cows on a dark t-shirt

 

I read once that peows original designople whose faces are symmetrical, even on each side of the nose, are more attractive. I suppose that is true and I suppose that we see that unconsciously.

When I see a drawing, I immediately know if I will like it on a shirt. My business partner has this trait in spades. Often I see something I like and when I show it to her, she jumps or says, “meh”.

The picture at the left was the original I located on Pixabay. My business partner loved it and so I began the process of making it ready for a t-shirt on our Neateeshirts.com store.

With this drawing, what I saw was the cocked heads of the four cows and the comical coloring and faces. I saw good design. I checked out the artist while I was on Pixabay and downloaded a few others. But I also saw this without the black background. So, my next step was to remove that and see how it looked on a shirt.  Black was going to interfere with the fabric. Black is not black every time. Black is either red-black, green-black, or blue-black. My choice would be in every case, no black.

cows alternate design

With the black removed, I now had a transparent background and the color of the shirt fabric could show through.

Four cows, cocked heads, and color to go with a variety of fabrics.

I loved this drawing even more now.

I was smiling. Good design, charming faces, and good color. I did think I would like to shift the color to Fall colors, but not for the first pass.

I got online and started applying the design to a variety of shirts and colors. Here is the result. Dark t-shirt with cow design cow design on a t-shirt with light fabric

The design works on light and dark fabrics and of course, it makes me smile.