Testing out illustration styles - fruit stickers

 First initial fruit stickers

Sketches

I wanted to play around with different illustration styles in order to explore the fun and wacky decorations of fruit stickers. The main thing I've noticed within my research is that a lot of fruit stickers have anthropomorphised fruit/ cartoons within their branding; these are a selection of my interpretation of this. I think its important to play with this illustration style as its such a massive part of fruit stickers and the culture surrounding them. 

An idea I had was to create some illustrations inspired by the knock-offs found in fruit stickers, such as things like Rolex stickers etc. These illustrations of parodies of cartoon characters combined with fruit; they celebrate the ridiculous decorations found in fruit stickers, through adding the fun illustrations found in cartoons such as Goofy and Spongebob.

I think my favourite sketches from these initial illustrations are the Goofy banana, Garfield melon and the Spongebob Pearpants; I feel like they have the best compositions and character. I want to test out different colour palettes as well to celebrate the wacky colours in fruit stickers; this will help me explore the playful nature of cartoons and the designs featured in fruit markets. 

Digital development

I wanted to play with editing the sticker designs further through adding colour; the hues I used were very much reminiscent of the classic fruit stickers found in market stalls, with slight faded colours and pastels. These worked quite well at adding a childish and fun sense of voice to the designs, which complimented the cartoonish illustration style. 

In order to add more of a genuine effect by adding a paper sticker texture to the designs; this was inspired by the stickers curated on the @fruitstickers page on instagram. This definitely helped develop more of a vintage effect, through replicating retro fruit stickers; I could always explore this further in creating stickers for my publication? As well as this, I think its also very important for me to try and replicate these stickers as effectively as possible due to COVID, as it may be difficult for me to actually print them physically. Due to this, I think I need to consider the materials I will be using for the actual physical publication, in order to inform and communicate ideas better.