A School of Ice Cream Fish
Ice Cream Pint Labels and free children's collage classes at the Brooklyn Public Library
Daffodils are starting to bloom, spring is on its way, and with the warmer weather comes one on my favorite things - Ice Cream!
This past month I worked with the Unofficial Ice Cream Company to create original artwork for their spring ice cream pint labels. Founder and chef, Abby Prager, is committed to working with artists to bring creative charm to all her pints - unique artwork for each month’s unique flavors.
The only prompt for the artwork was “joy”. I started with a very rough sketch, many rough sketches, trying to hone in on “joy” - specifically the joy I felt as a kid eating ice cream cones.
I am not really sure the exact point of inspiration for this little kid snorkeling through a school of ice cream fish came from (bottom right). But it felt very joyous to me - I mean, it would have been my dream as a little kid.
I then refined the sketch digitally so it read more clearly. Once the sketch was approved by UICC I started making my little paper fish and paper kid. It always looks a little weird at this stage as I don’t have any details. I like to do very small details and facial expressions digitally. Playing around with the small details digitally allows for a lot more iteration and minute changes to facial expressions can drastically change the tone and emotion of the piece.
I then scan the paper in and start to arrange and edit digitally. As the kid is swimming in a school of fish I only made five fish and duplicated each about four times so there was some sense of repetition and pattern in the fish shapes. (Also, making five fish is a lot faster than making 20). I can then recolor the fish digitally so there appears to be more variety. Here is the full process from start to finish.
Cannot wait to get my hands (and spoon) on of of these pints! Thank you again to Abby for the opportunity!
Finally - little PSA announcement that I am offering free children’s collage classes at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library on the last Thursday of every month. Full schedule here. We make an absolute mess every time and it’s a lot of fun. If you live in the area and have a little one (age 6-10) please come by!