Tea/Tee Serpents (Process)

I recently completed some art for a challenge on Threadless called the Thermos Loves Design Challenge. I have always been intrigued by designs that wrap around cylinders, so I decided to take a stab it with the Tea/Tee Serpents design. I decided to make a design with no end. It does this fusing at a seem and wrapping around the cylinder.

I was inspired by pottery designs of ancient civilizations. The scale motifs were inspired by North-African art and the water swirls where inspired by Ancient Greek art. The idea of using a snake was influenced by the importance of snakes in the Ancient Mayan culture. I wanted to use the circle, of the Thermos, to represent infinity. As you may have guessed, each character represents the four-senses: Visual, Auditory, Smell, and Taste. The sense of touch is activated by touching the Thermos.

The design process is demonstrated below:

The red box shows the first sketch of the concept. The little faces represented possible faces for the serpents.

This a sketch demonstrated how the Thermos would look. This also shows the idea of using swirls for the liquid in the art.

I downloaded the measurements for the Thermos and created a template to follow to make sure the serpents fused seamlessly.

I drew each serpent and the swirls on separate sheets of paper. I used the previously mentioned template to place the serpents and swirls in the composition. I was also extremely careful to cut and place the fuse making serpent, and swirls, in the perfect position. I printed a copy and taped the paper together at the fuse location to be sure the serpent and the swirls lined up correctly.

Then I experimented with color and came up with a cool palette. I also inserted a water droplet texture behind the serpents; I had to use the rubber-stamp tool in Photoshop to make the droplets repeat exactly along the seem.

I put the placed the design in a t-shirt and Thermos template for the world to see.

It is a three-color print on a light blue shirt or a three-color blueish gray brushed steel Thermos.

Here is a link to it on Threadless, pending approval of course:

APPsolutely inGENIOUS!

Anyone who follows this blog probably remembers that I do work for an online magazine called Literacyhead. Last week I was contacted and asked to create 6 logos/identities in 24 hours; and yes, my jaw dropped with a deadline like that. It turned I actually had a weekend to complete the project for an education competition but that is still not a lot of time.

The identities were for a Suite of APPs called APPsolutely inGENIOUS! Each App uses art in different ways to teach story comprehension. The mix of Literacyhead being good about letting me be creative and clear communication, about the project, made these identities a success.


Art Starts uses art that relates to a particular story to help kids understand the story.



The Build App asks the readers to build a building, house, or room based on their level of comprehension of the story.


This one uses art to make analogies to help with reading comprehension.



Picture Problems uses Math to help with the comprehension of stories. Don't ask me how this works, I am terrible at math.



This App uses the different substance of cooked egg textures to demonstrate levels comprehension: Hard-boiled (understand clearly), Fried (kind of understand), and Scrambled (don't understand).