This year’s fifth annual Next Chapter Society merchandise campaign partners with local artist, Wesley Hall, for a special edition t-shirt and tote bag. We asked Wesley to share about his creative process and how he arrived at the final product.
You can purchase your merchandise through Friendly Arctic, October 11-24, at bit.ly/comeformusicstayfornpl
On a Monday afternoon in August, I was working when I got an email with what I can only describe as a dream project from the Nashville Public Library Foundation. They asked if I was available to design a t-shirt for their annual fundraiser. I was an immediate YES.
I’ve been a lover of the library since I was a child. My dad was a librarian for several Nashville colleges while I was growing up, and about 3 years ago I began working part time as a mentor for the teen maker space, Studio NPL (come visit us at the Main Library).
I normally start my design projects by sketching out ideas on Procreate on my iPad, but I knew I wouldn’t get to sit and sketch until the evening so I did some really rough, quick sketches on a note pad I had nearby.
It was three ideas. A skateboarding book, a book loving racoon, and people with books for heads. I believe when starting sketches you should just sketch what comes to your mind and edit later.
1) Text: Libraries are Awesome Image: a book with arms and legs on a skateboard doing a kickflip in one arm is an instrument (a guitar or ukulele) referencing the Library of Things and Nashville being the Music City and in the other arm a board game to reference that you can get more than books at the library.
2) Text: I go feral for the Library Image: A raccoon reading a book, referencing raccoons as the official state animal of Tennessee and tapping into the Jimothy hype some.
They liked the ideas but also wanted to explore illustrations with the idea around “Nashville: Come for the Music, Stay for the Library”.
I then illustrated my “cool skateboarding book” idea and did one with the book looking like it had just gotten off Broadway with a new cowboy hat and fancy new boots.
I next took my idea of the racoon and did my initial drawing.
I then thought it would be fun to combine the book on Broadway and replace it with a raccoon holding a stack of books. I gave the raccoon overalls to break up the design a bit and because I like their aesthetic, they also remind me of the old show HeeHaw which was filmed in Nashville.
To me, the raccoon is a musician who has come to Nashville to make it big with his overall and old guitar, his first stop was Broadway for new boots and a hat, and after getting a bit lost he ended up at Nashville Public Library where he spent the day out of the heat and finding some very useful books on how to help him achieve his dreams.
I then took the two raccoon ideas and did a little bit of color treatment. I was worried that on my country star raccoon design I might have been running into too many colors for the shirt.
I was on the right track. They liked the raccoon but wanted to see it a bit cuter, to drop the skyline and to limit the colors. I updated the illustration and thought I would pull it into Photoshop to set the text and shapes.
They liked this, but gently reminded me that they preferred my original handwriting text treatment as it allowed the raccoon to take center stage of the design (I had a real “oh yeah duuhhh” moment when I read the email). Eagle eye viewers might also note that on the three color illustration I changed the raccoon’s fur highlight from black to white/the shirt color and that I changed the grey from a warmer grey to a cooler one.
Once everyone was happy, I took the design back into Photoshop and cleaned up the layers to make sure it was all good for screen printing.
Artist Bio
Wesley Hall is the middle child of a librarian and a nurse, born and raised in Nashville, TN. He found a love of reading at a young age, thanks to his father and the comic boom of the 90s. After he learned about Dungeons & Dragons in the 4th grade, his nerdom was cemented for all time. In his youth he could be found reading/making comics, drawing, playing video games, and thinking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In adulthood not much has changed.
Wesley calls himself a cardboard cartoonist because he loves to make puppets, masks, sculptures, and illustrations out of cardboard and other recyclable materials. When he is not hot gluing cardboard together, he also draws the comic Pizza Dad (check it out on Instagram @PizzaDadComic). Wesley also spends his day with his hilarious kiddo, his beautiful wife, and their 4 lovable pets (3 cats and 1 dog).