Clothes

I dressed up Heisenberg for Halloween. He was more interested in sniffing the shoes of our guests, though, than chasing himself in circles due to the dangling ribbons (although he did have a good tail-chase in the tub later that night, if I recall correctly).

I've been working on sketches for some new block print ideas. Stay tuned! And I should finally have a painting day on Wednesday. I haven't had a day free for that in weeks.

A handful of my friends run a convention just outside of Springfield MA for which I got to do the t-shirt design and booklet cover this year. The Author Guest of Honor was Jo Walton, so I borrowed a stack of her books and got to reading with the intent to do some imagery that would be applicable. The first scene that jumped out at me was from "Tooth and Claw", where two adult dragons (and two baby dragons) are discovering a cave full of treasure.

I had a few considerations I was taking into account when laying out the image. One was that on the booklet cover, at just under 8.5x11 inches, there would be a four inch logo covering up a section of it, and it would be all grayscale. I decided to leave the upper right corner available for the logo (essentially like how the t-shirt ended up, bellow). The other consideration was that the image would need to reduce well to only three colors for the t-shirt printing process (two ink colors plus the color of the t-shirt).

I used the opportunity to try a new method of painting, as well. I covered the canvas in thinned out burnt umber, and drew out my highlights with a rag. The technique lent itself well to the dark imagery, which in turn lent itself well to a black t-shirt design, black being a popular t-shirt color at this event. I would like to improve my ability to use this technique. I found it hard to bring back the white of the canvas, which meant I needed to go in with titanium to brighten up my highlights, which killed the colors I was getting. I'm guessing that if my rag had been lightly dipped in mineral spirits, it would have worked better for that (but I try to keep my solvent level fairly low).

I like the overall result. And it gray-scaled nicely.
I submitted two options for the t-shirt, one with and without background, due to some input I received that the background was distracting.

Lucky luckily suggested simply adding another color or two to keep the background there but differentiate it, which really improved the design. (And in retrospect makes me wish I had toned down the background for the gray-scaled booklet cover as well.)
The t-shirt inking was not as precise as I was expecting/hoping, but I like it.

What's a crafty aunt to make for her nephews? Fun t-shirts!

Isaac is super into Legos (which I love too), so he got a lego man. I thought it a good follow-up to the card I gave him last summer.

My nephew Teo likes cement mixers. My parents wanted to give him a shirt with bright colors, his name (since you can't find shirts with his name on it), and a cement mixer. I was in silkscreen and fabric marker mode when I did this one.

I figured he could do with another name-printed shirt, and some more bright colors. Since I was in applique mode, I tried silkscreening my cat-design onto a fuzzy fabric, and sewing it all together.

Previously on Tashari's Sketchblog:

So I wasn't going to try this technique on skintones again, but I found a better option, and it works on the gray shirts (which I like better).

This time I used paint markers instead of dye markers. I learned about a new brand, Molotow, and they have a much wider range of colors. Nothing specifically a good skin tone, but some close enough to work. I just used white on the highlights and let the skin tone bleed in a bit, and then added a little extra brown for the shadows. When I put it up on Etsy, I'll charge extra for this added coloring since it take longer and is a little more difficult. I need to test the launderability as well. I also need to make one of these for myself.. But I have so many other projects lined up.

Up next? Order Charbonnel's new watersoluble etching ink, and get back into etching! Do some preliminary sketches for a new painting series focused around my stuffed dragons. And start the mockups for my steampunk dress. Expect more WIPs than sketches in the upcoming months.

I left work early last Saturday to go enjoy @party, and have a relaxing evening. It was a lot of fun. I got there with enough time before dinner was served to just sit back and not have to do anything. Someone was outside gaming, and so I drew him.

And I had a fun time listening to chiptunes and watching demos. It made me want to do hand drawn animation again... and maybe I'll do some for fun sometime soon.

I've also been having fun on the side with my shirt painting techniques (working with fabric markers and a wet paintbrush over my silkscreened outlines).
I did the white shirt first (and have since worked on it a few times) to try things out and see what looked good before doing the shirt I have up on Etsy. The other gray one below is an alternate I don't think I'm quite finished with yet (I want to darken the wing membranes).

The gradients on her skin were a pain that I think I barely recovered into something reasonable. I won't be trying that again. I want to bring some just silkscreened, unpainted shirts to 5Pi-Con, though, and see if anyone wants custom colors.