I recently illustrated a children’s cartoon style logo for Beaverdam Baptist Church. Beaverdam has been a great customer to work with, as they keep bringing me awesome projects to push my style and creativity. You can check out my last project for Beaverdam here.

I’ve broken down the logo into a step by step tutorial so you can see my process. I’m splitting the post in to two parts because of the size, so check out part 1 after the jump.

Concept/Sketch

The people at Beaverdam were pleased with my past logo/vector projects, so when the children’s ministry was in need of a new logo they came to me. They already had a concept for the logo based on previous artwork, and sent me a hand-drawn concept sketch of how they wanted the new one to layout. I used it as a reference and sketched a new tree designating the highlights and lowlights.

Vector Time!

I imported my sketch into illustrator and put together a color palette. I had known when I created the sketch exactly how many colors I’d be using, now I just needed to find the right colors to make it all mix.

Once I have my palette chosen I drop the transparency of my sketch down so I can work underneath, being able to see both the sketch and vector layers at the same time.

I start with the base color first and add each color in different layers to ensure they’re easy to sift through if any changes do come. I DID NOT put my grass layers and tree layers together, though they are the same color, the grass needs to be on it’s own layer below the tree top to drop the tree trunk over.

Once my tree top and grass were completed I continued the same technique to create the tree trunk and dirt below the grass. I also added in the tree top highlights, using the lightest color from my palette.

Voila!

Once your tree is put together you can drop the sketch layer and see how it looks.

Adding Text

I then typed the title on a path and converted the text to outlines. I then duplicated it several times applying different strokes to give it more depth and color.

I then did the same for the subtitle, and added highlights to the main title using the pen tool.

After my text is applied, I’m ready for the first proof!

Stay tuned for the second part of the post tomorrow. The customer had a few additions, but they were awesome additions.