Making “Slay Your Dragons” - How to Turn a Drawing into a T-shirt Design.

Inside look at illustrating a design for a t-shirt

T-shirt design is one of my favorite forms of illustration and graphic design. There are so many cool designs out there, and it can be fun to create within some of the restrictions that come with the medium. As part of my on going Daily Drawing Project, I wanted to create a t-shirt that was within my style and niche interest. I like to do a lot of fantasy and comic-like illustration so that was the style and niche that I chose.

Sketching

I didn’t have all day to sketch out 100 ideas. I had a phrase in mind and I spent 30 minutes just roughly brain-dumping into my sketchbook…

Very rough sketches that convey what I’m trying to get at. These are just guides for me so I don’t care what they look like (helps to keep me from stressing about perfect drawings).

Refined Drawing and Inking

When I draw I am still figuring out where I want the final design to go in terms of composition. Drawing is just visual problem solving. Some artists know exactly what they want to draw and how they want to do it. Others have to do some exploring (and often times, stumbling) with the pencil or pen or brush to get where they want to go. Here is what my inking process looked like…

I wasn’t very careful with my inking, so I ended up smudging some of my lines toward the end. Fortunately I had planned to refine the inking on the computer so no harm no foul.

Going Digital

I have gotten away from working on the computer more and more as I have wanted to challenge my traditional skills (and to be honest I had a desperate need to unplug from technology in my work). For this short project, however, I wanted to test out a new graphics tablet that I had bought so I scanned this ink drawing and brought it into Affinity Designer (I used to be an Adobe guy, but I opted for a simpler pricing model for my software with no A.I. garbage).

At some point I will do a more detailed walkthrough of my digital workflow, but for now I’ll just say that process is fairly simple:

First re-ink my drawing using solid inking brush. This is my opportunity to refine some things that maybe weren’t clear in the original, and I can rework areas that I may want to change.

After this I choose my color pallete and lay down my colors. I wanted colors that popped and had a good pleasing contrast to each other. In a normal digital illustration I would do shading, but because its a tshirt I try to stick with solid colors and let the line work do the talking when it comes to light source.

Side by side of ink and color on Affinity Designer.

Making the shirt a reality

I loved how this design turned out, but I didn’t want this to live on my computer or sketchbook. I went to work getting a sample made for me to wear around and get reactions from friends and family. I decided to use Printful for my shirt since I have used them before in the past, and I love their quality when it comes to print-on-demand t-shirts.

I ordered my sample, and am currently wearing it. I had it printed on a Bella and Canvas 3001 which is my favorite unisex t-shirt to use for graphic tees. It is soft both the shirt as a whole and the design that is printed on it. The nice thing about POD t-shirts is the ink is not as thick or stiff as sometimes can happen with screen printed shirts. The shirt is very durable as well if you take care of it. I have washed this several times now and the print is still just as fresh. The key is to wash it inside out on cold and NOT putting it in the dryer. The dryer tends to crack the ink (which it can do regardless of the printing method). I just lay mine flat to dry and it still fits perfect.

If you guys like the design you can check it out in my shop and get your own!