The client wanted a maniacal looking clown smoking a cigar and wearing a leather jacket for a t-shirt. So I opened up Adobe Illustrator and just did a quick rough sketch with the pencil tool. Not worried about the detail at this point just wanting to get the feel and shap of the design. The best part about sketching in illustrator is that if you throw down a section and it's exactly what you want there is no need to redraw, just copy and past it to your final layer.

At this point I create a new layer and just start doing my tight line art using the pencil tool in Illustrator. Back in the day I had no use for this tool, but since the upgrade to it's controls I love it! Now I mainly use the pen tool for mechanical work in my drawings otherwise I just freehand it with the pencil tool. Feels so much more natural. Normally I would create a tight black & white line art image before going to color, but with this client I was able to jump right into the color. They give me a lot of freedom on their projects.

I just continue to build the image up from here. I create all my flat color objects and start rendering on top of that base until I reach my final product.

This was the final rendering of the clown shirt, but after it was completed they decided they wanted a motorcycle included in the image, so I expanded the image and put him a top a Harley riding toward the camera, which added a lot to the image and made it a lot more interesting.