I’ve started working on a few illustrations for t-shirts, and whatever else they find their way into. Kitkat’s a bit of a pickle fiend, so the first batch is all about pickles. Like most of these projects, it started with a doodle in my sketchbook that she liked and came to life from there.

Whenever I see cutesy cartoons of food, my first thought is always of that cute little apple or sausage screaming in horrible terror and agony while someone bites into it. As a kid, every time I saw the old movie theater clip of concession snacks dancing and singing, I thought about biting them in half and watching them scatter, like a hyena jumping into a herd of antelope. It was pretty much the same with pickles in a jar a couple of weeks ago. I saw them as drowning; trapped, the lid screwed on tight and filled to the top with brine.

Above is the single pickle (from my sketchbook) that started me down this road. Below is the jar of his drowning kin. The t-shirt has the single pickle, all happy-go-lucky on the front, with the pickles in peril on the back.

I’m working on additions to this, with the single pickle happily eating other pickles as they, of course, flail and scream.