Customised Artwork : a portrait on a Mug

The Meubliz Mug !

Last year, i've offered a present to my brother to celebrate his Website success : Meubliz.com (if you want to identify wich antique furniture you have at own and how much you can sell it for / guess who have done the illustrations of the website ?).
And  the present was a customised Mug, furnitures inspired with lot of details inside.

As he was very happy of his mug and did drink lot of tea and coffee inside, he ask me this year to make a customized portrait of a friend on a Mug !

The challenge was set, as it was never done before.

What size and what resolution

First thing i was thinking ofwas the resolution of the picture. Into make my portrait works, it need to be 15 cm high and 15cm wide to give a good rendering of the face i draw. It is directly connected to the sizo of my pen i'm working with.
I'm printing the mug through the web, using the panoramical picture on a mug service. I need to provide a picture of 4400px by 1950px, close to a double square format.

Into keep the original picture small, i've decided to go on a picture of 12 x 27cm hoping the final rendering will work. And it work but it was hard to draw the lines of the face.

Here is the final Original picture

What can i draw inside ?

Halo a game of Peace and Love

As usual, the pictures were accompanied with lot of fun details, with this one who was "we met every 3 months into play Halo on the Xbox as a saturday night party". So was my first representation of a peace and love game based on destruction, missile and machineguns.

King of Waffles

He is the KOW (King of Waffles), so i've pictured up a french chef with "the Toque", a waffle machine and a queue of waffle enthousiasts waiting for the magic result of Wafflemaking.

It's a shame i could'n be able to try theses waffles...i wanted one or more...

Customised mug on a table

Portrait on a Mug

So here it is, a shiny white mug with a continuous little black line on it, and the picture of the Mug Owner. Very custom and very personal mug !

If you want a custom mug, you will have to order an original portrait and i will be able to give a picture to the printing website. You'll receive your mug and your original picture as well.

Custom Order : The Dog Tag

Some weeks ago, i was asked to do a custom art work, well there was this story of a superhero inside the mail but i didn't found the picture attached to the mail.
So i did re-read the mail and found out that the picture was an item the superhero always wear, so it was impossible to get a picture of it : A Dogtag.

World War II Dog Tag

What is a DogTag ?
Used for dog purpose, this item became famous during the world wars, specially during the second one : the dog tag was attached around the neck of soldiers, and was used for body recognition after fights, each tag is stamped with the name, date of birth, religion and blood group of the soldier.
So the purpose of the drawing was an item from the second world war, and i've been looking for some pictures into draw it correctly.

Love Forever

So this dog Tag has a story, a story about love between a young boy leaving his wife during the world war. This boy was wearing this dog tag and was really in love with his wife during all his lifetime, a kind of unbreakable love trapped into the metal making it a powerfull amulet

Lost Soul

This dogtag is now property of his grand son, who also have a story. A story of supercop, patrolling on his motorcycle an casualy working as a sniper for the S.W.A.T.
During a SWAT operation he felt down and get injured, meaning he wasn't able to ride again a motorcycle.
Cop in his mind but no more in the action, he became a lost soul. The dogtag  gave him the will to overcome this accident and to find a way to continue to be a cop.

He is now a firearms instructor for the police academy and an inspiring mentor for his students.

The dog tag