Medium: Watercolor, Digital/Photoshop, Image Size: 12”h x 16″w, ©1999.

At the time this design was created, my husband and I owned Trekker Designs, an apparel decorating company, and one of the things we did was to screen print our designs onto apparel products and novelty gifts and sell them to our wholesale clients. One of our biggest clients was the Black Bear Diner Corporation. This design was one of the many black bear artworks we created which were printed on clothing, mugs, and cards that we sold to Black Bear Diner to sell in their diners and to be worn by employees. The old truck in the illustration belonged to Bruce Dean, one of the Black Bear Diner Corporation owners. I often saw the truck parked in front of the Mt. Shasta diner, so I thought it would make a cute, anthropomorphic bear design to fill an old classic truck full of bears.

Give a bunch of bears an old pickup truck and, sure enough, they’ll go bearreling along looking for some tasty food. These are the Park Service’s Nightmare Bears who finally figured out you can’t loiter around waiting for handouts, you gotta drive to where the food is.

Painted in watercolor, floated, and effects and text done in Photoshop.