Shirts for this weekend!

This Sunday is the Spring Dust off sponsored by the Connecticut Volkswagen Association. I have decided that this is a good opportunity to see how my shirts go over at a VW show. Since my splitty dash shirts went over so well, I decided to print some of those and designed a Beetle dash shirt in the same style.

I also tried mixing some of my colors together before printing and accomplished this neat-o marbled pattern!

Here they are!

The new bug dash:



Splitty Dash:

Snoopy's painting done!

Alright! Here is a set of pictures of snoopy's most recently requested painting!

Both the progress pics that I should have posted up here, and the finished pics that I took this morning before shipping it out.








Finished!


And some close-ups... click for a larger image:

Snoopy:


Belle:


and Jasmine:

Snoopy's painting progress

Snoopy has asked me to do a portrait of him and his two pups as a mother's day present! I decided to do it in a style that I haven't done since college, but one that I have been meaning to get back into. Basically there are two steps to it, the first is to paint the entire image in black and white, and then use washes of color to build up the skin tones (and in this case fur tones too!) The color wash process is very similar in technique and appearance to watercolor except that I will be using acrylic cut with some flow release medium and water instead of using tube watercolors.

At this point, I have pretty much finished w/ snoopy's face (aside from some minor detailing) and am blocking in his two dogs today. Over the next little bit, I will be finishing up the dogs/ snoopy's torso and then adding the color. I am hoping to have it in the mail by early next week, leaving plenty of time to present on mothers day!

The lighting is a little poor in this pic, and as such the colors are a little dull here. I hope you like it Snoopy, more pics tonight!

NEW DESIGNS!

Hey there Paintedbus Fans, This past week has been a busy one! Check out my new screen print options!


OG SUV:


Let's Go Camping!:


Paitnedbus Artwerks (as modeled by Jessica!):

Another new screen

For Adam!
The "Paintedbus Artwerks" shirt didn't print perfectly, so I went back into it w/ a brush. You can tell when you are close up b/c of the variation in white intensity, but hey, these are handmade! Thats what makes them cool! I am sure over time it will fade, and will be difficult to tell anyway! Hope you like them!

White ink on black shirts:

What a day!

Well, I guess sometimes you just gotta go with your gut. I had a good feeling about offering shirts and you guys have proven me right!

Here are some of my results!

For Tracy, Chris in CA, Chris in MA, Maria and me :D


For Adam, Lynn and J


and a new screen for Adam!


Tomorrow if I have enough screen material left, I will stretch another screen for the "lets go camping" shirt. If not, I will have to wait until I get back from CT on Monday.

Snoopy background and making a screen!

To start off with, here is a background I came up for Snoopy's next project. It is going to be a mother's day gift for his mum and will feature his smiling face flanked by his two dogs.

This painting has a twin yet to be sanded and color washed, so if you don't think this one is the right color scheme we can go with the other one! I just got carried away and went with what seemed to be working!




Also, some tangible progress on my photo emulsion screen printing project! The first part of making a screen is coming up with an image. If you look back at my last couple of posts, you can see that I came up with a whole bunch of them!

Next, you must make a film positive. I initially tried doing this on my home printer w/ some wet media film but that did not work out so well. So, $7 and a trip to Staples later I have a stack of perfectly printed film positives ready to use.

Here they are all hung up on my wall:



And here is my ever-so-popular "Splitty Dash" painting in its film positive format. (it happens to be leaning against Snoopy's painting) This was todays focus:



The next step in making the screen is messy and done entirely in the dark, so I don't have any pictures of it. It involves prepping the screen by coating it w/ the sensitized photo emulsion and drying it in completely void of UV light. To me, this meant no light... but now it means under a yellow "bug light" since i gave in and bought one today. Insects don't see yellow bug lights since they lack the UV spectrum. It is for this reason that they work well for my dark room. I can see, but my sensitized screen can not. :D

After everything has dried sufficiently, it's time to expose the screen! I did this by first placing a black sheet of card stock down on my work surface. The black does not reflect light, so it works well as a backdrop for this step. Next, I sandwiched the film positive (face down) between my sensitized screen and a sheet of glass. The glass allows light to pass through and does a good job of keeping the positive in place. Then I set my egg timer and turn on my 500w photo flood light. This bulb is ridiculously bright and should develop a screen in about 20-30 minutes depending on several factors. Here is what all that looks like in action!



After the allotted time, I turned off the light and brought my now exposed screen to the sink where I >VERY CAREFULLY< rinsed it out to expose the negative. I actually screwed this up twice and had to re-do the above process three times today! AAAAH! Oh well, you can't learn this stuff without screwing up a lot! You must stay positive! (pun intended, lol)

So here it is all dry and taped up! I did lose some tiny details and couldn't get the screen entirely clear, but it is satisfactory for now. We will see how it prints tomorrow!


Next up, bug dash!

More print options

Been working on some more ideas... these are based mostly off of photos instead of paintings... But they will probably end up being paintings in the end too! :D