Long story short, it was a very hot day in Minnesota when I was coming up for an idea for Creative Sunday. This hot day brought me back to my childhood and having the ice cream truck come around the neighborhood only on some of the hottest days of the summer and getting out of the pool and running after it down the street. That bright yellow background with all the classic favorites of the Rocket Pop, Fudgesicle, Orange Dream, and then Bubble Gum made me want to emulate that in a fun illustrative way.

After looking up some references of size and proportions I created all the popsicle shapes and separated them into their colors brown, orange, red, blue, and so on. Then I used some water color scans I got online to overlay the popsicles to give them a fun texturing as well as mix of colors. Some blend modes worked better than others depending on the color and I just made sure to use a clipping mask of the shape of the popsicle so the water color scans didn't bleed out to the background. Side note to get the base color swirl for the Bubble Gum, I used Photoshop to paint on some stripes of pink and blue with a soft brush and then use the liquify tool to swirl it all around to this gradient pattern. After all the coloring was done,  I added a few little highlights to bring it all together and solidify the shapes with the textures.