These are the t-shirt designs added to the shop in May. They became a bit brighter as the weather warmed up. I have now been cooked sous vide style and am bracing myself for summer.

There’s not much going on in May as far as nationally or internationally recognised events go. If there are, I was completely oblivious to them. That has left me to make designs according to whim and the weather. And random challenges.

Hugely Cute

I am terrible at perspective drawing. I did a few sketches for the theme of “cuteness and greatness”. I actually forgot why I chose this as my theme, so really, the whole time I was drawing this, I was trying to remember why I was drawing it. All I remembered was that I wanted an awesomely big cat who looked cute. In the moment that I thought it up, it had made perfect sense. I was sure the thought would return, I would remember the brilliant idea that inspired the theme for this shirt, but no. I completed this tedious perspective drawing without ever understanding what I was thinking when I first came up with the idea. Or at least thinking it must not have been a very good idea to begin with.

To get the proportions and scale of all the catty bits perfect, I used a 3D model to help me. Here’s a screenshot of the model, the father who helped in the creation of this design. He did the bare minimum, didn’t put any elbow grease into it at all, but I got all I needed from him.

So, how do I explain a t-shirt design that I made when I don’t know what its reason to exist is?

The caption was originally supposed to be “Cuteness and Greatness Can Coexist”, but after that lost its lustre in my mind, I eventually decided to call this one “Hugely Cute”. Because huge things can be cute too. Just think of Godzilla and King Kong. You need but round their sharp edges and give them great big sparkly eyes and they shall become cute. I think I should have done a giant gorilla or dinosaur instead now. I have this feeling that if I did, I would get contacted by one of the big companies that owns them, demanding I hand over my profits and take down the design. Never mind. Giant cats are safe, I’m happy with my decision. Cats are also very round already. This one doesn’t even have any pointy claws. He wasn’t inhumanely declawed or anything, he was just born cute and round and awesomely big.

While I was drawing this cat, I did have a few horror themed titles floating around in my head. I won’t tell you what they were, but I will show you the reason I think I was having these thoughts.

I tend to do the eyes last.

Fleeting Twinkle

I wanted to submit something for a Threadless challenge, so this is it. It had to be some kind of comic. With cats. It had to have cats in it. I’m certain that was in the rules somewhere. So, I dutifully made a comic with a cat in it.

I must still have the memory of my soulless characters with their hollow eyes floating around in my mind, so the theme of this comic would be empty, soulless eyes.

I really would have preferred to do this one as a pencil sketch, but I was worried that the lines would be barely visible if it was ever printed. This is actually the main reason I tend to do bold outlines for most of my shirt designs. It’s not really my preferred art style, but I think it works well for shirts.

I’m pretty sure all the fine lines in this design will show up just fine on a shirt print, as I have tested this line width before.

I noticed that there are lots of different artistic depictions of black holes. Most of the images on the internet of “black holes” are, in fact, just artistic interpretations. The real footage of black holes interacting with other things is usually very blurry, so I just had to do my best to represent them as realistically as possible, while also making them artistically fitting for this comic.

I hope you like my handwriting.

Joocy

Originally, I wanted to do an assortment of juicy berries, but due to time constraints, I had to make do with cherries. Only cherries. I tried doing a strawberry but decided to add lots of detailed lighting to it, resulting in it taking too long to do and me giving up on it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it look exactly as I wanted in time. Cherries are much simpler and arguably more delicious.

Although berries may not actually be the juiciest things you could eat, they are attractive looking, so perfect for a t-shirt design. I reckon watermelons really top all fruits on the juiciness scale. Feel free to disagree in the comments section.

It had to have some equally juicy text to accompany it, and instead of writing, “Berry Juicy”, as I had originally planned, I opted to misspell juicy by spelling it with cherries. I think it’s fun to make designs that complement puns, but I’m not one to use them in day to day life. Also, I’ve been surrounded by people who insist on bombarding me with puns all the time…

I decided to soften the edges between colours so everything looked more rounded and the design was less like a vector image. But, since these are supposed to be smooth, shiny skinned, juicy fruit flavoured things, there had to be some nice, clean shines. This is just so that you know how ready they are to burst with juiciness.

Summer is Coming

Everybody always looks forward to the summer. Kids are looking forward to their super long summer holiday and the grown ups are looking forward to a holiday away from home. But summers are getting hotter here in the UK.

I know George RR Martin talked about summer like it was a wonderful time and winters were a terrible thing. I suppose when the seasons last for years, I can see how winter might be rather bad in the Game of Thrones universe. But is summer really all that great? It’s hot and uncomfortable and difficult to concentrate in the heat.

This was for the webcomic challenge again. It turns out it didn’t have to have cats in it. My mistake…

So, this is “Summer is Coming”. There was a bit of a heatwave over here, and this is how I felt about it. And, at the time of writing this, it’s not actually even summer yet.

I was originally going to make this a chocolate bear ice lolly, but brown is a bit dull. Then I asked a small child what colour it should be and the child said purple. That is why the ice lolly is purple. It’s not my fault. I didn’t make that decision. I made the decision to make it someone else’s decision, someone else who may or may not have good decision making skills. What do you think? Was it a good decision?

If anybody tells me it wasn’t a good decision, you should know, I’m going to tell the kid.

 

So, there you have it. All the t-shirt designs for May or 2026. Would you like to have seen some of these on a mug or tote bag? Or something else?

And don’t you think purple is so much better than brown?