New Mono Lake Committee T-shirt … behind the scenes!

All of you T-shirt lovers out there—heads up! The Mono Lake Committee will soon be welcoming a new T-shirt design to its collection. Back for another summer at the Committee, I wanted to put my illustration skills to use and design something youthful and hip that would showcase one (or some) of the amazing creatures that live at Mono Lake.

The first step was to come up with a subject, so I whipped out my sketchbook and the brainstorming commenced: “Something about the food chain” I thought, “or about the gulls.” It dawned on me that not a single shirt in the store had the famous California Gull on it, even though it is one of the most visible birds in the Mono Basin during the summer months. Then I thought “and what is one of the COOLEST behaviors of the California Gull at Mono Lake? Why, the hoovering of alkali flies of course!”

If you’ve never seen a California Gull eating large quantities of alkali flies at Mono Lake, make sure you do someday, for you are in for a treat: they run down the beaches, mouths open, sucking in swarms as the flies attempt to escape. Not only is it ingenious, it’s downright hilarious! What if I drew a gull in hoovering posture, running through a swarm of alkali flies? The flies could travel up the right side of the shirt as they dispersed. As both a wildlife nerd and an admirer of creative design, it was the T-shirt of my dreams. Now, how to make that dream a reality….

First I had to sell the idea among staff. Luckily, that wasn’t too hard! Rose Catron, our Information Center & Bookstore Manager, was all for it, and helped me start the process by discussing types of T-shirts we could use. Next I needed sources. A skilled illustrator can make anything look good, but the accuracy of an illustration largely depends on the quality of one’s references. The next time I was at Navy Beach I took some photos of the gulls vacuuming up the flies. These were my references, and they were essential in helping me draw the posture of the bird. I also searched the Committee’s collection of photographs for California Gulls and found a few more.

From my photos, I chose the pose that looked the best and proceeded to trace the outline of the gull. Once the trace was complete, I photocopied the outline and increased the size so that the gull was about six inches wide. I then transferred this larger image onto vellum (a transparent plastic film used by many pen-and-ink artists instead of paper), once again using pencil. Originally I had planned on using the vellum simply as a place to make a preliminary drawing, but its smooth surface enticed me to keep shading in detail, and before I knew it I could tell this was to be my final product. The only thing missing was the sharp detail of the feathers, but I had a solution to this problem: Bob.

The Committee happens to have one stuffed California Gull gracing the bookshelves in the store. As far as I know he doesn’t have a name, but I like to call him “Bob.” Bob took a little vacation from store for a few days and posed as a model for my drawing in the back office. The next best thing to a live specimen is a what’s called a “study skin,” and Bob was mine. Including all those feather and feet details was possible thanks to him!

I used a separate sheet of vellum to draw the flies, which consisted mostly of small amorphous blobs of graphite. After about three hours, the drawings were complete and ready to scan into the computer.

After importing the files of the gull and flies into Photoshop, I increased the contrast and saturation of the drawings using the ‘curves’ adjustment layer. For each file I selected all the drawn portions and deleted the white space surrounding the drawings. This enabled me to overlay the flies onto the drawing of the gull, and to change the background color. To create an actual “swarm” of flies, I copied the drawing of the flies onto multiple layers. At one point I had 15 layers of flies! I could move each layer and place it in such a way that the swarm looked realistic. If I had drawn all of these flies by hand, it would have taken hours and changes would have been very difficult. Using Photoshop is an approach that saves time and makes changes much easier.

When the file was finally ready, Rose and I made a trip to Designs Unlimited, our printer in Mammoth Lakes. It was an eye-opening experience to see how the image would be translated onto the silk screens, which would then be used to print the T-shirts. It will still be a few weeks before we see proofs of the shirt, but I’m excited for the finished product! Look for the shirt on sale in the fall catalog of your Mono Lake Newsletter—it may just be the perfect holiday gift.