I saw a spoon once with a skull for a head and there was text on it that said ‘cereal killer’. I thouhgt it was genius. When I see things that impress me this much, I also get disappointed a bit. Why didn’t I come up with it? Then months later I realised that even though I didn’t make this connection myself, I can still reflect on it with my own artwork.
I immediately envisioned a bowl of colourful fruit loops with a silver spoon against a pastel green/blue background. There could be a header on it saying ‘Morning of a Cereal Killer’ with some retro, swirly fonts. As I was working on it, Shaun walked by and suggested that instead of the spoon, I could use a sharp knife. Again, what a great idea! And again, I wish it was mine. Well, it wasn’t, but still, I will sell it as my own for those who won’t read this description.
I definitely did the hard labour of cutting around the objects though (bowl, knives, butcher knife, fruit loops) and adding layers upon layers of shadows trying to make it all look 3D and organic. As if all of the objects were on the same minty table, photographed together.
Then I switched from Photoshop to Illustrator and started to play around with the text. I swear, it’s always the hardest part. For me, anyway. I had a specific vision of a swirly, playful, cartoony font in my mind and I went through so many of them only to realise that none of them were free for commercial use. So I had to keep looking and looking and after a lot of trial and error, I found this one. It was the closest thing I could find to the blurry vision in my mind but it’s still quite far away. Even with the extra swirlies I added. But I had to make peace with it because there was just no option within the Open Font License category anywhere and I just had to make a decision to be able to finish this art work.
I guess the purple 3D-ish effect and the thin white contour made it look alright at the end.
Lastly, I added some scratchy effects to make the image look old and washed out like it’s from the 1970s of America as if one of the ladies from The Stepford Wives movie set the table.
This poster is available for purchase here. Plenty of sizes and frames to choose from!
art from scratch 