The Pandemic hurt a lot of businesses, and while some found a way to flourish, you don’t often hear about businesses like Benny’s Pizza Palace and Social Club. What started out as a small pop up kitchen during the pandemic, somehow turned into a full fledged brick and mortar fine dining establishment.
I first heard about benny’s pizza through some mutual friends. They began offering detroit style deep dish pizza on a very limited basis through a facebook group. The pie’s looked amazing, and the reviews seemed to back it up. Like a lot of families, we’d been ordering out more than usual and were growing tired of our options. We had to give them a try, and instantly saw why they were becoming a local sensation. Since this started as a side hustle, supply was limited by how many benny could make during their hours of operation. Demand was growing fast, and the group was entering the thousands. People began to jokingly refer to him as “pizza jesus”, and comment that it would take a prayer to get a pizza.
Through our frequent order pickups, mutual friends, and run ins at our favorite watering hole, i considered benny a friend. Like a lot of people, i want to see those around me succeed, and good people doing great things get the recognition and success that they deserve. Being from a smaller town, i also see value in supporting local, and how important it is to do what you can to give your favorite businesses any help possible to keep them in operation. Often, that may lead to me offering my skills and experience. In this case, i did just that. I thought it would be cool to do a sticker of “pizza jesus” similar to those you might find on a prayer candle, benny agreed.
The linework and greyscale were done in clip studio paint, with the color and font work done in photoshop. As you’ve probably seen in my previous entries, over the last few years this has really become my go to combination for projects like this. At times, when a final deliverable needs to be in vector format, I will often use the vector pen tool in clip studio paint and image trace that in illustrator. There just isn’t much out there that feels as natural as theirs when drawing.
