These two guys appear every now again in my work and with being on the cusp of a new release in my store based around these characters, I thought I'd give you the reader a bit of a background on what they are all about.
Art of people with weird objects or food for heads is probably a concept that's been around well, since the ancient Egyptians. For whatever reason people like sticking animal heads or in this case, fruit heads, onto human bodies and I'm no exception!
The main inspiration for these sort of characters I make come from a few different sources, my love for the animated show Bojack Horseman and Lisa Hanawalt's illustrations are probably the biggest influence for these sort of characters, along with my love of pop culture with many of the characters having nods to cinema.
The first time I drew lemon and lime in was for a university project where I created a card game and comic about various warring gang factions. Lemon and lime were the two masterminds of the Garnish gang, a group of criminals who were sick of being the second thought of a cocktail. They both have a sort of Al capone/Johnny Torrio relationship, Lemon is the figurehead bruiser while lime is the brains behind the operation. They inhabit a world populated of similarly strange characters like a Bruce lee Spruce tree and a man in a rubbish bin.
They are both two characters I go back to as I have a bunch of fun drawing them, so I thought it's only right that I use them as the catalyst of my upcoming shop releases and use these sort of characters as my niche in upcoming print fairs and shop releases to provide some consistency in that side of things. I've flirted with the idea of developing their world and stories into a comic one day but time will tell on that one.
I hope to release the first little part of this range soon and have them being sold at some print fairs around Manchester this summer so keep your eyes peeled!