Okay, so I’ve been messing around with some design stuff lately, and I got this idea to try and make a Longhorn logo, you know, like the Texas Longhorns football team. I’m not a graphic designer or anything, but I figured it’d be a fun little project.
First, I spent some time looking at a bunch of Longhorn images online. Just to get a feel for the shape, the angles, how the horns curve, all that. There are a ton of variations out there, some super detailed, some really simple.
My Process
- Sketching: I grabbed a pencil and paper and just started sketching. My first few attempts were… rough. Like, really rough. It’s harder than it looks to get those horns to look right! They kept ending up looking like weird bananas or something.
- More Sketching: I kept at it, though. I drew a bunch more, trying different curves, different thicknesses. I probably filled up like five pages with these wonky-looking Longhorns.
- Going Digital: Finally, I picked a sketch that I didn’t totally hate and scanned it. I opened it up in some image editing software – nothing fancy, just something free I found online.
- Tracing and Refining: In the editor I started to use the pen tool, but it was not really working so I switched it to the pencil tool, I traced over my sketch, trying to smooth out the lines and make it look less… homemade. This part took a while. Lots of clicking, lots of undoing, lots of zooming in and out.
- Coloring: I filled it in with that classic burnt orange color. It instantly looked way better just with the color added!
- Tweaking: I spent some more time just messing with the shape, making small adjustments here and there. It’s amazing how much difference a tiny tweak can make.
It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s recognizable as a Longhorn, and I’m pretty happy with it. It was a good way to kill an afternoon and learn a little bit about digital drawing.
