Argonaut's First Generic Crab Logo

ARTIST: William Louis ("Bill") McDonald Senior.

COMPANY: Argonaut-GreyWolf, which was incepted and founded on this $10,000.00 cash project, because of this project. My dad made me put $9,500 in the bank toward college and only $500.00 for my 1974 Volvo, and the dating scene at Dana Hills High School.

PURPOSE: Third-party business cards. The Tamarack Villas Crab became a secondary logo of mine and his own icon and his own quill-point drawn in India ink.

CLIENT: Tamarack Villas (Condominiums) builder Sam Lopez, a Mexican National commercial construction and builder on both sides of the border with dual citizenship and two big fishroom galleria stores in Tijuana and Los Angeles. He was a four-time divorcee, raging alcoholic, cash-spewing, "Happy Drunk" who was incredibly morose when sober. He's gotta be dead now. But he was an honest and very fair client who I made a fast friendship with--until he just utterly disappeared while I was in Marine Corps Boot Camp in 1984. If I had to bet my left nut on Sam's outcome, I bet that his illustrious business career and even his life ended in some Mexican prison nearest Tijuana, Ensenada or Sonora.

YEAR: 1978, April until sold in January of 1979 to an upscale east-coast Chesapeake Bay crab cooking chain with restaurants in Atlantic City, Potomac, Baltimore, Annapolis, Quantico, Newport-News, and Alexandria. Under the terms of that logo sale I had to draw an all-new second crab that looked less like a blue crab and more like a Jonah crab.

WEBSITE: www.alienufoart.com/alien-ufo-…

WEBSITE: www.deviantart.com/argonaut-gr…

WEBSITE: argonaut-greywolf.artstation.c…

ORIGINAL PROJECT FROM ONE YEAR PRIOR: Tamarack Condominiums down in Rosarito, Baja California Norte, midway between Tijuana and Ensenada needed a logo, a letterhead, and a road sign. This was my first professionally negotiated and paid-for commercial art render. And the crab stole the show.

MEDIA: Black Higgins India ink on cold press illustration board.

NOTES: I cheated. The crab I used as a model came from my fish tank and not the Dana Point Harbor Jetty, because Sam with the 1978 red Ferrari 308 GTS was in a hurry. If I got the drawing done in time, Sam was going to let me drive "That damned car!" I did, and he did. We were both "Wheeler-Dealers."

LOCATION: Sam's Condominium at the brand new Sea View Villas in Monarch Bay Terrace, California. He was one of the builders of that place too, just down the hill from my parents' home in the Monarch Bay Terrace.