Creating a Baby Bib

About 3 or 4 babies ago (not mine, mind you), I began sending custom bibs from CafePress to newborn babies of friends and family.  I started off with two basic designs: a blue color themed bear for boys, and a pink themed hippo for girls.  The animals are easy to draw in a cartoon fashion but also both bears and hippos are hungry or "hungy" animals, so I think it works.

So, I figure I would make a secondary design, this for a baby brother.  I decided to go with the bear theme again, but I am thinking a more babyish bear this time as this is a baby bear brother with the name Brian, so the alliterative quality should work to my advantage as well.

So, first I started off with some thumbnail pencil sketches.  Thumnail sketches should be small and quickly done with as many variations as you can think of.  Get ideas down on paper.  When you work small, proportions tend to come easier.  You don't have to worry about details.  They should be quick, short, sweet sketches as a way to sort through ideas and directions.  They don't even have to be complete.  It is literally brain-storming on paper.  Instead of just a bear face, I wanted to add a prop of some kind to do with eating.  Bowl? Spoon?, messy food?  I also thought it would cute to have the bear wearing cartoon bear footie pajamas.  Of course, this would require a full body profile, so maybe not.  I thought also of doing more of a book illustration watercolor, but then I remembered that I am not Beatrix Potter, and I didn't want to wait until the kid was 3 before he got his bib.

I went with a more finished take on the baby bear in a high chair, and it would up looking similar to the first bear design, which I thought was fine.  I think it should be easily recognizable as baby bear cub, and it has a setup: the spoons, the bowl, and the high chair.  This baby bear is ready to eat.  I purposefully made his bowl empty and the baby bear looking up to his mommy or daddy, like "where the F is my food?" The hearts symbolize LOVE, as in bears love to eat manflesh, but they sometimes have to settle for porridge.  So, here is the finished non-reproducing blue colored pencil sketch.  And the very minor alterations as a black sumi ink sketch.

Colored, and text added, and submitted.  I went with a slightly reddish-brown hue for the bear's fur so I could still do a brown spoon.  Here is what the CafePress delivered product should look like.

CafePress is sometimes awesome, sometimes disappointing, but it's the thought that counts.  Maybe when I have a full-fledged studio running with a team of eager interns ready to do one-off custom silk screen jobs, then I can do some personal quality control.