Good Morning! This is Steve Mayer, the guy behind the Bird Dog Bay brand. Frequently, the question I’m asked to field most when chatting with fans is “What’s your inspiration for your designs?” After years of our marketing manager hammering me to write a weekly blog describing my illustrations and the stories behind them, I’m now waving my white flag. Every week, I’ll provide fans with a bit of a glimpse into the hundred or so designs I create each year. I’m known among friends to be a bit of an embellished story teller, so bear with me: short and sweet is not the Mayer way! Anyway, I hope you find it interesting as the rest of my team thinks you will enjoy it…

SHARK WEEK

 Design #254 – portfolio entry #3

The second most frequently asked question I’m asked is “Are you ever concerned you’ll run out of ideas for your silk designs?” The answer is usually an impish grin and the following explanation … were you ever to visit my studio and flip through my design files, you’d understand why running out of designs is the least of my problems–dealing with custom jobs, maybe–but thinking of the twenty-seventh way to draw a clever golf tie? Not so much.

As of today, there are thousands of random sketches on scratch paper, pub coasters, old Polaroids, Victorian Christmas ornaments, and vintage hunting licenses, not even considering the thousand of ripped out pages from home decor and sporting magazines. What started with a simple accordion folder when I was a teenager is now several file cabinets some twenty-plus years later. Really, I would say collecting inspiration for silk designs is my one real hobby, and I add to it every day. Just this morning, in fact, I sketched a design of a blockheaded English labrador retriever mid-flight from a dock jumping competition, inspired by a photo from the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, SC. Stay tuned as that baby might show up in next Spring’s collection…

Well, anyway, last year I came across a sketch drawn on a Key West snorkeling brochure tossed into one of the cabinets a million years ago. My illustration had a load of different shark breeds swimming in circles and in Sharpie I wrote “Tiger, Nurse, and Hammerstein.” Clever? I don’t know, but at the time I thought it would make a good tie for lawyers. Granted, I wasn’t sure I was going down the right path, so when I finally put pen to paper I drew in a little “Scuba Steve” to play it safe … well, maybe not so safe in these silky waters.