Coppertone Girl

A little while ago a good friend of mine, Nicole Montalto, contacted me to tell me about a new travel blog she had been writing for the OnSITE Travel Blog website. After she had done a few blog posts I guess she was official enough to merit having her own OnSITE business card.

She sent me an email showing me what their on-hand artist had done. She wasn't really too pleased with it so she asked me if I could try my hand at drawing her in some adventurous situation that had to do with her travels. We knocked a few ideas around for a couple of days and then she brought up something about hot springs and maybe having a bear chase her. I took that idea of the bear and substituted it with a little bear cub pulling down her shorts and exposing her bikini bottoms in an homage to the old Coppertone sun tan ads where the little girl had her bikini pulled down by her dog.

It was funny and cute and she loved the idea. The only thing that I wasn't sure about was whether she wanted a regular cartoon of herself or one with a big head, which would make the illustration a bit more in line with the rest of the business cards the company was putting out. She wasn't too keen on the idea of the big head so I did one with a regular head and then drew a bigger head which I could digitally substitute to give her a few options.

In the end, even though she didn't initially like the idea, the big head won out.

I have to admit, it did turn out a lot better than I thought it would.

So, here are the pencil sketches for the two versions. Now it's back to the drawing board to ink the piece up and get it out to have some business cards done.

I hope you're all doing great and I'll talk to you soon!