Ray Tribute T-Shirt Design (Vector Illustration)

This is a vector illustration I did of my great friend Ray Orias who passed away last year.

The design is for the shirt that several former bandmates of Ray will be wearing during a tribute performance this March 29, 2009, as well as other performances in the future.

These images show how I went about doing the vector illustration from the original photo. I first edited the levels of the photo to come up with three different tones of the image. From there, I created paths for each of the different tones that I felt best brought out his facial features.

I had to keep in mind that this design was for a screen print, and so, it was important I layered the colors properly and separated each of the paths to go along with the 4 colors to be printed.

This was how I went about doing this particular illustration portrait, but it can definitely be done other ways. And even though I'm sure it's obvious, I should point out that I got the theme from Shepard Fairey's Obama / Obey image.

The t-shirt will be available for sale in the near future (all proceeds will go towards the Ray Orias Memorial Fund).