TheInfinityLoop's Blog

There's a Pattern Forming

2011-07-24T18:13:00.000-05:00

Hey there. A while back this article about making patterns was brought to my attention: Welcome Julia and How to Make a Repeat Pattern. Ever since then, I had been wanting an excuse to try it out. To my luck, Threadless.com recently had a pattern contest, so I considered that my chance. I chose sea creatures for my subject because, well, I love sea creatures, but also I think they work well since their positions are so free flowing underwater. It's not too far of a stretch to have them freely swimming all over a shirt. Here is the submission at Threadless: Sea Pattern. And here are some images of the steps I took:

Pencil sketch of first group.

Cut it in half. Separate. Then cut it in half the other way. Separate again.

Pencil sketch of second group. Fill in the blank areas.

Ink the first group in Photoshop.

Ink the second group in Photoshop.

Put it together.

Repeat it all over the shirt.

Like it? I'd love it if you gave it a good score and maybe a comment over at Threadless here: Sea Pattern

Thanks for stopping by!

Build Your Own Bento Items #13 - #17 and Etsy Update

2011-05-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

All of my Build Your Own Bento paintings and frames are now available on Etsy! Please check them out here.

Bento - 2 Items

Bento - 3 Items

Bento - 4 Items

Ham

Durian

Rice Chicken

Ramen

Rice Penguin

Build Your Own Bento Items #7 - #12

2011-05-11T12:36:00.000-05:00

Strawberry

Rice Panda

Shrimp Tempura

Edamame

Rice Pig

Octopus Tempura

Build Your Own Bento Items #1 - #6

2011-04-17T13:23:00.000-05:00

Sukoshicon is coming up in less than a month and I've been busy preparing for it. I'd like to keep you updated on the items I'm going to "serve" in my Build Your Own Bento project. Each one is on a 2.75" x 2.75" mini canvas and can be put in a hand-made "bento" frame. There will be 20 items to choose from. I've completed six designs, and each time I finish another, I'll try to quickly post it here to keep you updated. Here are the first six. Stay tuned for more! :)

Hot Dog Octo

Shrimp Nigiri

Boiled Egg

Tuna

Broccoli

Fried Rice

The Debut of "The Art of Dogs and Food"

2011-03-27T15:52:00.001-05:00

For the past three months I've been feverishly painting and getting prints made of my food-inspired dog pieces. This past Saturday all of that finally came to fruition at the Fountain City Arts Festival in Prattville, Alabama. Other than some bad weather, I'd say it was a success. Thank you to everyone who came out! The dogs were very well received, and I got to make some great connections. This was sort of an experiment of mine to see if this would be something I'd like to continue. I am confirmed now that I will be. Throughout this year, I'll be hunting for more show opportunities as well as adding more breeds to the collection. Right now there are eight, but I'm looking forward to adding to that.

I'd also love to take this opportunity to announce that the first set of "The Art of Dogs and Food" series is now available in my new Etsy store! Please stop by and visit them there. :)

I'll leave you now with some pics from the show:

Bento Box Project

2011-02-20T16:29:00.000-06:00

I'm excited to announce a new opportunity to branch out. I've reserved an artist table at Sukoshicon, an anime convention that is touring all over Alabama this year. I will be at their Montgomery event Saturday, May 14th. It took me awhile to make this decision because other than my recent "Dogs and Food" acrylic project, my portfolio consists of digital tshirt designs, not tangible, sellable products. I chose to overcome that by expanding what I have to offer. I came up with an idea that fits me and is something I think (and hope) people will enjoy. I have a passion for unique food. When I look at a menu, most likely I'll look for either the weirdest thing, or something I have never tried and base my decision off of that. So I started with that passion, combined it with my acrylic resources, and it evolved into a project called "Build Your Own Bento."

In their real, edible form, bento boxes are extremely artful, so for me it was an easy transition from that concept into a more permanent art form used for decoration rather than eating. I know it's sad that you won't be able to eat these, but at least you'll get to look at them longer, right? :) I found very small canvases (2.75" X 2.75") and thought it would be great to use them for individual components in a bento box, like this octodog and shrimp nigiri.

Then I constructed a frame that mimics the idea of a bento box, but functions as an art frame. With hardware on the back and decorative ribbon, you can either hang it on a wall or simply just let it sit pretty on your desk or coffee table. The individual painting components can be interchangeable and there will be many, many different food characters to choose from. There will also be different color and size options for the frames.

I will be including these paintings and frames in my Flickr portfolio. I'll also be keeping you updated about them on my Facebook page and Twitter feed.

I'm hoping I'll get to feature my other new project, "Dogs and Food" in a local art show and in an Etsy shop soon. I'll definitely let you know. Thanks for stopping by!

2011: Branching Out

2011-01-05T08:44:00.000-06:00

Towards the end of last year, I was struck with inspiration to try other things besides tshirts. That's when I offered some of my designs as prints and opened up the shop. I enjoyed it enough to want to keep going and do more. This year I will still do tshirts, but my new goal is to branch out and try my luck with paintings at local arts and craft fairs and conventions. I'm going to start with an acrylic painting series all about dogs and food. This little guy was part of that inspiration. Here is "I'm, Alas, a Salami" on an 8" x 8" canvas. :)

In related news, 8" X 10" prints of this are now available at my shop. Free stickers with every purchase! :)

Happy New Year!

Loopy Shop is Now Open!

2010-11-29T00:01:00.000-06:00

Happy Cyber Monday! If you can, while you're out browsing, take a look at my new store. It's just a little shop for now, but hopefully there are enough cool things to start with. In the near future, depending how it goes, I hope to upgrade, put more bells and whistles on it and add more of a variety of items.

I'd like to take a little time to feature the Christmas card. It's probably a familiar image to you by now, and I'm sure a lot of you remember Slushie printing at Tilteed.com back in June. This however, is a modified version--a festive version. :) Each 5" X 7" card is signed on the back and comes with a white envelope. You can get one for $3.50 or six for $10.00. Here are some close-up pictures:

The rest of the products are art prints from former tshirt designs. For now, I'm offering three different designs as 8" X 10" prints for $8 each. They will each be signed like this example of "The Eye is the Window" here.

Oh, and btw, every order made this week will come with a free sticker--one of these:

This will be the first round of hopefully many, many more things. I would love to hear suggestions and feedback. Let me know if there's a design you'd like me to offer, or different size, product, anything! I'm all ears. Be sure to keep up with news on Facebook and Twitter. I'm there a bit more often than I am here, and I'd be glad to have your company. Happy Holidays! :)

Coming Soon! The Infinity Loop Store!

2010-11-22T09:15:00.000-06:00

Hello all! With the holidays coming there are many things to be excited about. This year I seem to have an extra helping of holiday spirit, so I'm putting some of that to good use. In one week from now, I plan on opening a small online store! I'm going to retire a few of my shirt designs and sell them as prints and greeting cards. If you haven't bought your normal pack of Christmas cards yet for this year, let me urge you to wait -just- a little longer, because I've designed one especially for this occasion. :) I don't want to reveal quite everything yet, but I will say that a lot of the products will be under $10, and oh, hopefully there will be cool stickers involved too.

Here is a sneak peek pic:

I have more news! I now have an artist fan page on Facebook! This, along with Twitter will be the best way to be updated on my designs and current artsy events. Do you like me? Well, go click that button and make it Facebook official! ;)

Breath of Life Prints at Tilteed

2010-09-25T21:07:00.001-05:00

My apologies for this post being a bit late, but even so I'd still like to share. Last weekend, my Breath of Life design printed at Tilteed.com as a limited tee. This was the design I mentioned back in March here that was an example of something that was made at first in a hurry, got a second look, and was properly finished later.

I was very pleased to see it print at Tilteed. I was also really happy with its feature page and interview. If you missed out on getting my shirt, don't be too sad, because they have an on-going catalog of other designs worth a lot of praise. It's definitely worth a good browsing as well, so head on over there after checking this out. :)

Oh and one more thing before I go--I've added a new section of links on the right side called "Past Prints" for quick reference of my prints by year.

Prints from 2010

2010-09-25T20:59:00.001-05:00

Year of the Place Mat - Shirt.Woot February
Dance of Kitsune - Squidink March
Slushie - Tilteed June
Painted with Water - Shirt.Woot July
Breath of Life - Tilteed September
Autumn Aviary - Shirt.Woot October

Looking Forward to Fall

2010-08-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

Fall is coming soon, and not only am I looking forward to cooler weather, but also the hopeful chance to celebrate the season with the printing of this shirt. It's called The Fall of Troy.

When I first heard this idea described to me, I knew I wanted to do it for many reasons. One, I couldn't wait to draw the leaves. I'm aware of how that might seem strange, but I sort of thrive on detail. I immediately saw their oranges and golds too, so filling them in sounded enticing as well. The second reason I wanted to do it doesn't make a lot of sense either. Most of my close friends and I went to Troy University, and yes, we were the Trojans. So even though the Trojan horse was the pride of our enemies, I still have a strange affinity toward it. I'm going to decide that doesn't make me a traitor, ha ha.

I'd like to share with you the process of the creation of this design. I have to admit, there are times the process of creating shirt designs in general for me can be nerve-wracking and difficult, especially if I'm trying something new or just not confident of the idea. This design was wonderfully not the case. Other than some trouble deciding on the shirt background color, the entire development was enjoyable.

Of course it started with a sketch...

which was scanned and then inked in Photoshop.

I began to fill in the wood. Then I started to go a little crazy with the wood grain. I honestly did not intend to go to this extreme, but it just sort of happened, and I couldn't stop it.

This embellishment ended up being my favorite part of the piece.

After a lot of back and forth on background color, ( I so wanted a light green to work!) I decided on creme.

Then came those oranges and golds I mentioned earlier...

and finally, the background scene and shadows.

For those that aren't extremely familiar with making a design practical for printing, I'll show a close-up of the shading and highlighting. When I first colored this in, my technique was very similar to the act of "painting." But if left like this, the shirt company would have to use a more expensive printing method called simulated process, which can handle an unlimited amount of colors.

In hopes to increase my chance of this being selected to print, I limited the number of colors to six and separated them by turning them into halftones.

And that finished it! I hope this was enjoyable for you too. In fact, I hope you enjoyed that so much that you click this final mock-up and go give it a high score and a comment at Threadless.com! :) I haven't printed there yet. I would be thrilled to see this do well. I also have yet to reach one hundred comments on a submitted design there. Think you can help me make that happen? Thanks for reading, guys. <3

Painted With Water Finally Prints

2010-08-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

A lot of you may remember me working on this design last year. I originally intended it for Threadless, but I'm still happy to see it come to life as a daily pick at Shirt.Woot. For those that may be new followers, (welcome btw!) I blogged about how the design came to be from idea to completion here.

If you were of fan of this back in the day or if it's a new love, it will be for sale at Shirt.Woot temporarily. A big thanks goes to all those who helped encourage and support this!

Push Past Pop

2010-06-18T12:35:00.002-05:00

Push Past Pop.

It's the name for my concern about the over-saturation of pop culture in the art world--with emphasis on the t-shirt art world. However it's also about support for artists who contribute their unique expressions and help us discover things we never knew we would like or relate to.

For those that aren’t familiar with t-shirt art, let me give a little background: Most of the time, shirt art comes from contests. The general public votes and scores designs to help determine what is printed and, just as importantly, which artist makes money. Conflict arises sometimes because people often vote based on popularity and trends instead of quality, concept, uniqueness, and true art. Right now pop culture references and parodies are the trend. The issue is that it involves using other peoples’ ideas, other peoples’ characters, and other peoples’ artwork. If an artist isn’t careful, his/her end result contains very little of his/herSELF, yet they have the possibility of being paid for that, and also beating out artists who created something truly original.

To be clear, I'm not dismissing all pop culture. I like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I don't need TEN different shirts of them. A clever and ethically-done parody every now and then is great, but lately it has gotten out of hand.

I feel this trend is problematic in many ways, but I’m going to focus on combating two.

One, it eclipses fresh and unique art, and discourages artists whose passion is to express deeper things about themselves. I have so much respect for these artists. I want to support them, and I want to encourage others to support them. Motivation is not static and not unlimited; encouragement is one way we can help supply it.

Two, I think people are quick to follow trends because it’s kind of like other people have “picked out things for them” and it’s easier. Finding things that are truly “you” takes time, but I can vouch, it’s so rewarding. This is close to home for me, because for the first time in well over a decade, I’m in a place in my life right now where I’m focusing on truly getting to know myself. I know that sounds deep for the subject of t-shirts, but it applies because I want to encourage people to take the time to really discover what they like. I’m not saying totally abolish all things pop, I’m saying push PAST it, to find the deeper connections.

I’m going to try to combat these two issues in this form: Take the time to find something different, and explain why I like it. I’ll also label it with Push Past Pop. On Twitter it will be #pushpastpop. My Twitter link is http://twitter.com/theinfinityloop. If you’ve also been feeling concerned about similar things, please feel free to do this too. And it doesn't have to be about just t-shirts. I will probably now and then showcase other types of art, perhaps music, and heck maybe even food, lol. I would love to see other people participate because that means more supports for artists, and maybe a chance that this pop culture pendulum will swing back a little. I’m going to start small for now. I can’t guarantee daily, but I will do my best to pick something at least weekly. I also might have a blog contest later on depending on how things go. Thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Puff, Puff, Pass

2010-06-17T08:46:00.000-05:00

Puffins are so cute. My friend Tanvi reminded me of this recently and my instinctive reaction was to try to come up with a shirt design to honor that fact. Pretty soon after that, she and her husband helped me brainstorm and this simple idea was conceived. If you enjoy these kinda-like-penguins-but-fancier birds, click this image, give it a high score and maybe a comment over at Threadless.

Taking Action

2010-06-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

Hi there! I got really tired of that brown antique-ish look that I had going on here and did some redecorating. I think it's brighter and fresher now. I've also added a new group of links called "Loopy Tutorials" over to the right. I've gotten some great comments about them so I made them easier to get to.

Speaking of tutorials...

Recently I did a design for Threadless that involved a coloring style that had sort of realistic shading and highlights. However, in hopes of giving it more of a chance to print, I didn't want it to depend on simulated process. The price I had to pay for that is to make halftones in multiple layers. It figures an onion design would have lots of layers right? Anyway if you've done any halftoning you know how repetitive and time consuming it can get. I made an action in Photoshop to save time. Ever use actions? No? Here's a quick tutorial how to do it.

Okay, remember my tutorial on halftones? (Whoa, I just noticed that was exactly a year ago!) There were 13 steps to follow and that would be for each layer. To summarize, these were the steps:

1. Create a new file the same size in CMYK. Drag the gradient layer into it. Change the colors to go from black to white.
2. Flatten image.
3. Change image mode to Grayscale
4. Change image mode to Bitmap. This will bring up a dialog. Make sure the resolution output is 300, and use the Halftone Screen method.
5. Choose Frequency, Angle, and Shape.
6. Change Image Mode back to Grayscale.
7. Change Image Mode back to CMYK.
8. Unlock the background layer into a regular layer by double clicking it.
9. Using the Select menu, select color range of Shadows.
10. Select Inverse.
11. Delete.
12. Make a Color Overlay of the color of your choice.
13. Drag this into your original file.

Steps 2 through 11 can be programmed into one click of a button. Get your file to the point where you are ready to continue starting with step 2. On the same window as the history, there's a tab labeled "Actions." Click on that and then click on the icon at the bottom that represents "create a new action." It looks like this:

Then a box will come up. You can name the action what you want and you can assign it to a key like F3.

Once you've named it and picked out a key, click "Record" and proceed through steps 2 through 11 like you normally would. Then hit the stop button here:

That's it! Now when you're ready to halftone again, your steps are reduced to 4:
1. Create a new file the same size in CMYK. Drag the gradient layer into it. Change the colors to go from black to white.
2. Click F3
3. Make a Color Overlay of the color of your choice.
4. Drag this into your original file.

One thing to keep in mind is that the frequency, angle, and shape is always going to be the same for this function, so say for example, you chose circles for this, but later you want to use lines, you either need to go through the halftone steps manually or make a different action that uses that setting. And lastly, actions can be used for anything, not just halftones. If you ever notice that you're doing something repetitive, go make it the F4 button!

I hope that was helpful. If you have a question, please feel free to comment. Feel free to comment anyway. :)

Yes, But Are You Cotto or Genoa?

2010-04-05T19:11:00.001-05:00

The existential dachshund is pondering currently at Threadless. Please leave a comment there and a good score before his deep thoughts cut him too deep.

The Eye is the Window

2010-03-26T08:43:00.000-05:00

Here's a really quick update, guys. I put one of my designs I did last year up for scoring at Threadless. It's got a couple more days to go and I'd love it if you'd toss me a comment, and maybe maybe a high score? ;) Anyway, check it out if you have time. Thanks! Also, be in mourning for my poor desktop. It's been brutally attacked by viruses and will need to be completely wiped clean before I can use it again. Thankfully, my laptop has been keeping me afloat with my design time, bless its heart.

Prints at Squidink and Operation Tee

2010-03-22T15:29:00.002-05:00

First, let's start with the most time sensitive news. Dance of Kitsune is today's 5quidink.com shirt! It's only on sale until tonight at 1am central time, so dance over there quickly if you fancy foxes with multiple tails.

Last year Shirt.Woot had a BBQ themed Derby. I started out with the typical anthropomorphic food being scared of a grill, but then became unexplainably sad. This happens to me a lot. It probably has something to do with the fact that I'm an artist and artists usually have something "off" in their brain. And while, especially in my case, that could mean off, as in dim or not on, here I mean something not quite right. (Dear other artists: trust me, I'm not insulting you. I like oddities. They make us cool.) Anyway, my melancholy along with being inspired by Blake B's two gems, Among the Trees and Outside the Cathedral (currently on sale at Tilteed,) enabled me to make a BBQ emo in the design Cookout in the Valley. It didn't win the Derby, but ten months later, it won the hearts of the people at 5quidink.com, who started a new project called Operationtee.com where it is currently on sale. Check it out, as well as the new site which looks pretty fun.

As far as new designs go, I am in full force into trying to get a Threadless print, so my Derby entries are going to be more scarce. Exciting things are happening though. I promise to still keep things interesting and to keep you posted.

Back to the Drawing Board

2010-03-04T20:14:00.000-06:00

Entering Shirt.Woot Derbies is certainly a good way to train yourself to design in a timely manner. Once you read the new theme you basically have, at most, three days to submit for the highest chance of printing. But sometimes it's good to not rush things. When you design at your own pace, one of the luxuries you get is to be able to walk away, leave the piece for a couple of days and come back to it with fresh eyes. Another luxury is to try different methods of execution. It's perfectly ok to spend a day perhaps applying color to linework, then realize it's not the best style. When you're not rushed, you can shake it off, chalk it up to experience and start again another day with a different style and discover you love your design even more than you thought you could.

This sort of happened to me with the design Breath of Life from the Renew Derby back in December. I did this hurriedly, and was okay with it enough to submit, but I knew it wasn't what it could be. The white outline bothered me the most. It cartooned a design intended to be more serious.

It didn't win, and after the sixty day waiting period, I came back to it and was ready to "finish" it. I modified it so it was no longer dependent on the outline, redid the shading on the waves and added more realistic shading to the horn. I'm a lot happier with it now. It's currently being scored here at Threadless. I'd love to get your comments there if you have some time.

So when you're shopping around for possible new homes for designs, always ask yourself if it's finished. Sometimes they are, but a lot of times you'll find opportunities to take them even further.

Round of Recycling

2010-03-01T09:11:00.002-06:00

Once you start recycling older designs it's hard to stop! Look--I've got four here, and one (possibly two) on the way. A couple highlights: My mermaids are at a new site called InkBlitz, which is a sports related tee contest. It should not be surprising to those that know me that the closest thing I could dig up to sports would be synchronized swimming, lol. But, hey it works, I think. Another highlight is my Snow Angel from the Winter Derby back a year ago. I put her in some warmer scenery, and I'm hoping she'll strike a chord at GoodJoe.

If you get a chance, I'd love for you to have some punch and maybe daydream about carrots as you browse through these oldie-but-goodies. :)

Punch Line at Threadless

The Rabbit's Weird Dream at DesignByHumans

Synchronized Sea at InkBlitz

Midnight Guardian at GoodJoe

Dusting Off the Pallette and Paintbrushes

2010-02-21T22:57:00.001-06:00

As much as I love the conveniences of digital media like layers and ctrl-z, I will always have a place in my heart for old fashioned fine art. There is something indefinably gratifying about dragging a saturated paint brush across the porous fibers of watercolor paper. That familiar feeling came back to me last Thursday night when I was working on my latest Shirt.Woot Derby design. I think the experience was worthy enough to share as a little blog tutorial. Hopefully you will too, so here it goes:

I started out like usual. I sketched out my idea with a BIC mechanical pencil on plain copy paper straight out of my printer tray. I'm cheap and easy to please, lol.

With the general shape of the composition in mind, I painted some clouds and grass with black watercolor paint on some cold press watercolor paper. Since Photoshop has the wonderful function of "Color Overlay," it's only really necessary to use black.

I scanned those in, and very reluctantly turned them into halftones. It broke my heart to have to do that, but with the six color limit that Woot has, I didn't have a choice. Then I applied the colors I wanted.

I should mention that this is the edited version of the progression. I actually painted some trees too and tried to use the more abstract people I had in the first sketch at some point that night. However, in order to make this blog post clean, (and to deceive you all into thinking I knew what I was doing seamlessly) I'll keep this more simple. Next step was to ink and fill:

The clouds needed something, so I copied a chunk out of the right side of the sky and used it to add some shading to them. To me, it made all the difference in the world, and completed it.

As you can see, I didn't do a whole lot of painting. I did enough though, to make me crave more. Hopefully in the near future I'll get a chance to work on something more involved. Anyways, this design is currently up for voting here. I'd love it if these clouds joined the fog. ;)

Before I let you go, I'd like to remind you that Year of the Place Mat is available to buy at Shirt.Woot, but probably won't be after Monday night at midnight. If you'd like something perfect to wear on those guilty pleasure runs to the local Chinese buffet, let me suggest it.

Portfolio Update

2010-02-13T00:00:00.000-06:00

It's been too long since my last meaningful blog post, but even longer since I paid attention to my flickr portfolio. As a matter of fact, the link for it is so small, some of you may not even know I have one. I'd like to exhibit it here, if I may. It has almost every tshirt design I'm proud of since my very first Shirt.Woot Derby entry back a year and a half ago. It's interesting and assuring to me that starting from the back, I can see a gradual improvement. I hope that trend continues. Over the past couple of days, I've added details and descriptions to each design, as well as organized them into sets. I've had some requests for a central place to see all of them, so hopefully this is the best solution for now.

Loopy Portfolio

Regarding current events, Alabama just got a lot of snow! A lot of my friends and I were off today due to weather, which meant this will be a glorious four day weekend. I hope to get caught up on a lot of neglected things art-wise. Please stay tuned for blog renovations and a new WIP for Threadless!

Upcoming Facelift

2010-01-10T22:29:00.001-06:00

Hey guys, this is just a quick note to let you know I'm in the process of giving this blog a bit of a makeover. There might be times when the site will be locked down, but that's just because I don't want to expose you to my rough drafts and experiments. X) Stay tuned. I plan on adding some new elements that hopefully make it more fun and interesting.

Prints from 2009

2009-12-31T20:17:00.000-06:00

Life Renewed - Shirt.Woot January
Vincent's Alternative - Shirt.Woot January
Piranha Still Life - Tee Fury February
Lament of the Kiwi - Shirt.Woot February
Spirit of the Stag - Uneetee February
Eclipse - Ink-hound February
Gamer Mother - Cameesa March
Rain Dance - Shirt.Woot May
Big Brother Is Watching You - Shirt.Woot June
Half Full Wins - Goodjoe June
Cats With Weapons - Shirt.Woot June
Cardinal Letter - Ink-hound August
The Walrus and the Highwheeler - Shirt.Woot September
Brilliant! - Springleap September
Silver Lining - Teextile November
Use Proper Grammar - Shirt.Woot - November
Aw, And I Didn't Get You Anything (12 Days of Christmas) - Shirt.Woot - December

12 Days of Drawing--I Mean Christmas

2009-12-05T15:35:00.007-06:00

I dedicate my tenth Derby win to my parents. I recently spent Thanksgiving with them, but I spent a great deal of my time working on this design. They weren't hurt, they didn't complain, they didn't even pick on me. Instead, they were excited, helpful, and encouraging. They are two of the most unconditionally loving people I know, and that quality among many others makes me a very fortunate person.

I'm also fortunate to be able to offer you all a Christmas shirt this season. I've always enjoyed this crazy song, but even if it instead drives you crazy, I think and hope you might still enjoy the shirt. You can at least brag about the fact that you would be wearing the entire contents of the song. Woot has given it the title of Aw, And I Didn't Get You Anything (originally Inspired By The Twelve Days of Christmas.)

This thing was tedious to do, but for some unexplainable masochistic or challenge-junkie reason I welcomed it very soon after the theme was announced. Here are a few WIP shots of it:

Initial overall shape:

Fleshing out of characters:

Cleaned up and inked:

Coloring in progress:

Final:

Again, thank you for supporting this. And even though this was one of the most labor intensive designs I've done, it was worth it to be able to contribute to the holiday spirit.

Brilliant Pictures

2009-12-03T09:33:00.005-06:00

My friend Sherri received her copy of Brilliant! the other day. I'm jealous because I still don't have mine! But I'm thankful to see it and thankful to be able to say it printed very, very well. I'm sure most of you know the fiascoes I've had with disappointing print results, so let me shout a big thank you to the folks at Springleap. Here are some pictures. Sherri and I are extremely amused at the fact that if you wear this, my name will be on your butt. I think that's a good reason to buy it, don't you? Enjoy the pics, and if you catch this blog post before noon today, allow me to plead for your vote for my rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas at Shirt.Woot. Thanks, and happy December to you all! :)

Propaganda Derby

2009-11-17T16:31:00.003-06:00

The newest Derby has been strange, to say the least. The theme is Propaganda For Everyday Life, which is weird enough to be the only reason, but this is also the first Derby to use the new Fog of War format. In an attempt to deter cheating the system, the fog has now been extended from four designs to nine. The last notable strangeness though is that my design has stirred up a little controversy. I really wanted to drive home a Russian style, so I made some of the letters of my slogan look like Cyrillic characters. A lot of people think this contradicts the overall message because it doesn't make sense if pronounced. I can see where they're coming from, but I just look at it like it's a font. That's all.

Anyway, if you are a fan of proper grammar and spelling on the internet, and you're not offended by my font, please check out Use Proper Grammar at Shirt.Woot.

Silver Lining?

2009-11-03T17:35:00.004-06:00

The other day I was going through some of my old posts and it made me realize that I've become more lazy and distant with my blog. I really don't like that I've become that way, and I apologize. Being lazy unfortunately can be part of my character, but when it comes to personal expression, I'm not typically distant. It's usually a challenge for me to NOT wear my heart on my sleeve. The truth is I've been going through a lot of personal stuff lately, and it's affected my online involvment overall. This will pass. I don't know when, but I know it will. And eventually I hope to be more involved again. I hope to get back to a point where I can update this once a week consistently, and I'm considering a redesign as well. Anyway, don't give on me, k?

I'll leave you with a quick update of the recent Silver Lining print at Teextile. Yeah, I know it's kind of cheesy that I'm advertising this particular print in this post, but it really is just a coincidence. To be honest, at this very moment I'm seeing more tornados than sun peeking out of the clouds, but here it is anyway, lol. I apologize for posting this a bit late. Yesterday was the day it was $12, but it's still available until Sunday for $15 if you'd like to pick it up.

Painted with Water Update and Piranha at Teextile

2009-10-16T16:05:00.002-05:00

I'm still smiling and floating high from Painted with Water's Threadless score. I can't thank all of you enough for giving it so much support! This definitely moves me in the right direction for meeting my newest goal. Even if it doesn't print, I'm still so excited to break a three.

The next news takes place at Teextile, the new temporary home for Piranha Still Life (last seen at Tee Fury.) Grab it today for $12, the rest of the weekend it will be $15, and then it will be gone. Some of you have mentioned missing it the first time, so here's a second chance. :)

Can't stay for long today, just wanted to say hi and keep you in the LOOP! (I know, sorry.)

Painted with Water Design Ready to Score

2009-10-05T22:45:00.015-05:00

Last month I mentioned I was going to take some time off Derbies to concentrate on Threadless. I have to say, it's been very satisfying to be able to devote a lot of time to one design and not be rushed. I enjoyed being able to work on it and then come back the next day with fresh eyes and refine it. The design I'm referring to is Painted with Water, inspired by Paint with Water books.

I thought it might be fun to share the entire process of it. To begin, I have to thank AdderXYU again for reminding me of those books. One of our conversations made me think of the design.

The first thing I did was order a couple books to experiment with. I found a new one and an old one. The old one was so old in fact, that it didn't work! It was still great to study though. The old ones used more artsy and decorative patterns, like the snowflakes on Barbie's sweater here:

The new one used simpler patterns, but at least the paint still worked. I dripped water on it instead of painted to see what it would look like, because that's what I had in mind for the design.

Then I drew for a long time and finally came up with a sketch of things that depended on water. (If you need to, click on any of these images to see them larger.)

I inked it in Photoshop:

The easiest way to color it, I thought, was to first make it look like it would before water was applied.

And finally I "added the water." During the critique process at Threadless, the drops of water caused minor controversy. A lot of people thought they were distracting, but when I took them out, it looked too flat. I really wanted to accentuate the water so I decided to keep them.

Even though the process was lengthy, I enjoyed it--especially the "painting" part. It reminded me of painting watercolors with my dad when I was younger, except with less risk of me absentmindedly drinking out of the water cup with paint in it (which I did, once.) Anyway I hope you found this interesting and please take a moment to score it if you can here: Painted with Water

Thanks for reading!

Brilliant! A Print at Springleap!

2009-09-10T17:49:00.004-05:00

I'll be honest, I've been a bit stressed out the past few days, so my serotonin levels got a much needed boost when I checked out Springleap this morning and saw that Brilliant! won first place. I almost didn't believe it because I hadn't yet received any email from them. Regardless, it was a pleasant surprise, to say the least. Thank you to all of you that scored it!

The Daily Walrus

2009-09-01T08:26:00.005-05:00

Last night, my slumber was interrupted by the chime of my phone, and when I read the message it brought, I thought I was dreaming. It said "Your daily is up!" This was definitely well worth me groping around in the dark for my laptop to check Shirt.Woot. And there it was! I was so happy I could have just hugged that little crab. I'm not even sure it's possible to hug a crab, but I would try.

Anyway here I am this morning and it was indeed not a dream. Some of you may remember this design when I tried it out at Shirtfight. Sadly, it didn't make it there, but happily it found its place as my first Shirt.Woot Daily. I've changed it up a bit, hopefully for the better.

Aside from this excitement I'd like to point out a couple of other well dressed animals at Springleap. Please help these cats get a second chance by scoring and commenting.

And one last thing: Since I was fortunate enough to reach my last design goal, I figured it was time to move on to another. I've decided to focus a lot of my creative energy into Threadless in hopes to get a print there. It was kind of a tough decision to make, because for me, in order to do this properly, I'm going to have to lay off the Derbies for a little while. Up until the past couple of months, the Derbies were a bit of an addiction. But I began to get discouraged from the time constraints. There were occasions where I had to sacrifice quality and experimentation in order to submit on time. This way, I can take the time to learn new techniques and to perfect designs instead of rushing them. So, don't miss my Derby stuff too much, k? Hopefully this will help even better things to happen. :)

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for all of your support, my dear, dear friends.

Quick Update and Contest Winner Announced

2009-08-16T11:57:00.004-05:00

Here's just a quick line to say hello, ask how you are, talk about the weather (Alabama in August is unbearable,) and give an update on designy things. First off I'd like to congratulate MaskOfIcarus, the winner of the Loopy Blog Contest. He chose Spirit of the Stag as his prize and a copy of it is already on its way to him. A big thank you goes to him as well as all of the rest of you who participated.

I've got a couple of active subs right now. The first is The Witching Hour up at Shirt.Woot.

The second is originally from Shirt.Woot's BBQ theme, Cookout in the Valley. It is now up for scoring at Threadless.

I will probably be recycling a couple more of my older designs soon so keep your eyes out. Brilliant! and Dr. Whoooo are begging to get back in the game. I also now have three new ideas antsy in my queue that I will hopefully be able to make some time for.

Last thing I'd like to mention is that Cardinal Letter is about to disappear, so if you'd like to buy it, do so before tomorrow night. That's all for now!

12th Print Confirmed!

2009-08-10T07:55:00.003-05:00

I must admit, Cardinal Letter was not a design I expected to be the climax of my print goal; it's been resting at Ink-hound for quite some time--well over 90 days. I am by no means complaining though. It's actually one of my favorites, one of the very few cases I'm satisfied with the use of halftones, and I don't mind that it references Hawthorne either. It will go on sale tonight at midnight at Ink-Hound. If it seduces you, grab it quickly because it will only be available for a week.

As stated before, I will celebrate this being the 12th print by drawing a name from the long list of loyal fans that have tweeted something nice about my blog. That person will receive a shirt of their choice out of these options:

Cardinal Letter
Cats With Weapons (must let me know by today for this one)
Half Full Wins
Spirit of the Stag
Gamer Mother

Spreadshirt designs:
Comfy Pearl
Typical Weekday Morning
Deep Sea Book Light
Candy Coated Sticks of Happiness

There's still time! Like I said before, use Twitter to tweet something nice about my blog, include a link to it, and include the tag #LoopyBlogContest. One entry per person, valid until noon today. This is just my way of thanking those of you who have supported me in so many ways, and have truly helped make it possible for me to obtain this goal.

Back from the Falls

2009-08-03T22:00:00.003-05:00

Sorry for my absence yet again, but I have a good excuse I promise. Last week I went on a road trip with my inlaws from Prattville, Alabama to Buffalo, New York. It was definitely an experience. The best part of the trip was seeing Niagara Falls. Plus, I can say I've been to Canada now. I haven't really gotten to travel much, so this was very exciting to me. I was happy to leave the south for awhile.

As far as tshirt business, I was able to submit something for the Threadless Invasion Community Contest that my dear friends MJ and Adder host. Check out the thread here! They've been coming up with monthly themes so make sure to stay tuned if you'd like to participate. I was worried I wouldn't make the deadline. At some point I was actually drawing on my tablet with my laptop in the back seat of the car to get this done, lol. After reading a lot of the comments, I wish I had been able to start it sooner so I could tweak it more, but it is what it is. Please score and comment if you like. It's kind of strange, but maybe that's good?

One more thing--don't forget to participate in my Twitter contest I'm holding. Here are the details. I'm still patiently waiting for that 12th print, so you still have time. Just tweet something nice about my blog, include a link to it, and include the tag #LoopyBlogContest to participate!

Closet of Infinity

2009-07-22T18:36:00.003-05:00

I must apologize for not updating in a while. I try to post once a week, but not a whole lot has happened art-wise for me in the past couple of weeks. In my opinion, the Derby themes lately haven't been inspiring. For example: Tattoos. I don't have any tattoos. I've thought about it, but brief pondering is the extent of my tattoo experience, and that's not quite enough for me to feel the need to express myself artfully on that subject.

I do have one bit of art news--more like a bit of pleading. I've put The Nightsong up at Threadless and it only has a couple of days left for voting. Please, please take a second to score it (high?) and comment. I have a certain affinity for this one and I'll be honest, I'm madly covetous for a Threadless print, so combine those two things and that explains the begging.

For the rest of this post I'll bare my t-shirt soul in a way I have not before--I'm going to disclose my collection. I've only been aware of the online tee world for a little over a year, so my cumulation may not be as large as some of yours who remember the birth of Shirt.Woot. Maybe that's good though because I can actually fit it in this blog space, lol. I kid, I kid. So here it is, minus my designs of course, and minus shirts I want to trade. I've sorted it by website, and I've bolded and linked my top ten favorites. I hope I haven't left out anything...

Shirt.Woot

Phoenix Rising
Flora & Phonograph
A Rare Occurrence
Ur-Sign
Off and Away . . .
Battle Fungale
The Night Shift
Mon Petit Chou
Let Go
Dragon Slayer
Stuck Inside
Plumber in the style of Rembrandt
Ghosties
New Kid In Town
Americana

Threadless

Dragon Flavor
Nerds Unite!
Tools of the Trade
Summer's Passing
Nothing Is Written
Larry The Fox Doesn't Feel So Clever Anymore
I would look cooler if I were riding a unicorn
Timberland

Design By Humans

Bird and Blossoms
Dark fox
Victorian Facade (for sale)
Revelations
WinterTale
Daydream
Evolution of the Koi (I know, I know, I make fun of koi, but I won this one)

Tee Fury

Plaidinum (What. I like plaid and I like Star Wars.)
Chest Cat
Hope Phoenix
Orphans International ... Realizing Dreams
Silent
Furyous Omnibus
Tee Fury No. 1 - Heartbreak
Hope

Inkhound

Avian Crown
Cronikas

Teextile

Geek
Concentration
I Want to Dance Too

Cameesa

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction
Explanation for my Passion (or lack thereof)
Cheer Up! She Found You.
1928. Birth of an Icon.

Good Joe

Make Your Own Music

Wotto's Store

Marvelous Marvin (black)

Flying Mouse's Store

Mother of the Sea

Shirtfight Heavyweight Contest

2009-07-04T10:46:00.006-05:00

Hey gang, before I proceed to design updates, let me take a minute to remind you of the free tshirt Twitter contest I've got going on. For details, please see my last post here. So far the support has been awesome and I greatly appreciate seeing all those tweets!

Back to business, Shirtfight's theme this week is for Heavyweights only. Since I've had the honor of that title I wanted to take advantage of it. I chose to work on a design that I originally intended for their music theme a couple of weeks back. Anyone that knows me well knows I love the moody sounds of string music. If I hear a cello, I immediately cease whatever it is I'm doing. Add a violin and I'm hypnotized. A few years ago I actually purchased a violin and took lessons in college. It was extremely challenging though, and life got in the way, so sadly I never became skilled enough to bring it to its potential. Anyway now you see some of the exposition of this design. I wanted to at least attempt to translate the auditory effect of the music into a visual scene. Please check it out at Shirtfight and score it high if you like it. I call it The Nightsong.

One more thing before I go, I've put The Rabbit's Weird Dream up for voting at Springleap here. This is the first time I've entered anything at Springleap, and so far everyone there has been very welcoming. I know a lot of you supported the Rabbit at Woot, so help it get another chance here if you can!

Happy 4th of July everyone! Mine started early last night with friends and fireworks. Thankfully there were no major injuries or police at the door, lol.

Cats With Weapons and Contest Announced!

2009-06-27T09:28:00.007-05:00

I'm excited to announce that Cats With Weapons is now available to buy at Shirt.Woot. This unexpectedly controversial design managed to keep up a very competitive fight to stay in the top five during the entire derby. The 2nd through 5th place designs were neck and neck and the cats got a literally last minute surge of votes before the derby ended. Even with the conflicting and arguably pointless pseudo anonymity of this "Mystery" theme, I'm very happy to get a print from it. This derby also marked my one year anniversary of submitting.

Speaking of which, this shirt is my eleventh print this year, which means I only have one more print to go to reach my goal. For those that might be interested, here is a recap so far:

January 11 - Life Renewed at Shirt.Woot

January 18 - Vincent's Alternative at Shirt.Woot

February 5 - Piranha Still Life at Tee Fury

February 13 - Lament of the Kiwi at Shirt.Woot

Febuary 16 - Spirit of the Stag at Uneetee

February 24 - Eclipse at Ink-Hound

March 27 - Gamer Mother at Cameesa

May 29 - Rain Dance at Shirt.Woot

June 3 - Half Full Wins at Goodjoe

June 13 - Big Brother is Watching You at Shirt.Woot

June 27 - Cats With Weapons at Shirt.Woot

Aside from planning a celebratory evening with my friends, I'd like to do something else special for when I reach the 12th print. I'm going to hold a little Twitter contest which will begin right now. All you have to do is tweet something nice about my blog, include a link to it, and include the tag #LoopyBlogContest. It will be one entry per person, so you don't have to tweet it multiple times--although you're welcome to if you want! ;) When/if the 12th design prints, I'll draw a name from all the tweeps with that tag and that person will get one of my available shirts (their choice.) I know I don't have a lot out there, but hopefully there will be something the winner likes at least a little. Right now there's Rain Dance, Cats With Weapons, Half Full Wins, Spirit of the Stag, and Gamer Mother. But I can't guarantee how long they will be available. I could even re-open my Spreadshirt shop if someone wanted Comfy Pearl, Typical Weekday Morning, Deep Sea Book Light, or Candy Coated Sticks of Happiness.

So if that sounds good to you then get to tweeting! As always I'm thankful for all of you that support me and have helped these designs to print. Cheers!

Big Brother Prints!

2009-06-13T00:04:00.004-05:00

I just want to say thank you to all of you who helped Big Brother Is Watching You to print at Shirt.Woot! In January, I set myself a goal to have 12 tee shirt prints by the end of the year. I'm happy to say that this is my ninth! I'm thinking about having a contest to celebrate the 12th print so be on the lookout and stay tuned to my blog! Thanks again!

Half Full Wins At Goodjoe

2009-06-03T07:51:00.004-05:00

Just a quick update to inform you guys you can now purchase Half Full Wins at Goodjoe! Right now would be the time to pick one up because you can take advantage of the great pre-order price of $10 and you get to choose from six different colors. Once the pre-order event is over, the price will go up to $18 and Asphalt will be the final color. Pre-order event lasts until Sunday, June 7th, so snatch one up today! :)

I'm so thrilled to be able to add Goodjoe to my shirt resume. They are an admirable company because $1 from every t-shirt sold will be donated to local nonprofit organizations. Thank you to all of you that helped this print!

Rain Dance Pics and Halftone Tutorial

2009-06-01T20:22:00.011-05:00

Yesterday I had no idea what to blog about but by this afternoon two subjects were bestowed upon me. The first that I will discuss came to me by mail: My Rain Dance shirt! Now anyone that knows me knows I'm usually very nervous and critical of how my designs actually print. I'm ecstatic to say I have no anxiety or complaints about this one. I'm especially happy about the dark gray background in the design. I know the safest color to choose would have been black since the asphalt shirt is already so dark, but I just didn't want it to look too heavy. I took a risk in picking out a dark gray pantone. I'm not sure if they used the exact one I gave them, but the color that printed looks even better than I imagined, so thanks Woot! :)

If you like it, be sure to snag one while you can. It's hard to say how long it will be for sale.

The next order of business is halftones. I've read a lot of posts on forums and such with inquiries about the best way to execute them. I figured I'd go ahead and share how I do mine. I can't remember exactly where I went to learn them, but I know it was a tutorial online somewhere, so I don't take full credit for this technique.

Let's say you have a design something like this: (I use Photoshop CS.)

Make sure each color is in a different layer. The layer we want to convert to a halftone would be that glowy gradient behind the flame. Currently, it's a gradient from orange to black.

1. Create a new file the same size in CMYK. Drag the gradient layer into it. Change the colors to go from black to white. It should look like this:

2. Flatten image.
3. Change image mode to Grayscale
4. Change image mode to Bitmap. This will bring up a dialog. Make sure the resolution output is 300, and use the Halftone Screen method.
5. Choose Frequency, Angle, and Shape. You may need to play around with this according to how you want it to look. The higher the frequency, the smaller the detail and more difficult it is to print. I usually don't go higher than around 40. I'm not sure if there is a defined limit. If anyone knows this please feel free to comment because I've often wondered.

For this example I chose a frequency of 15, angle of 90 degrees, and the round shape. It should look like this:

6. Change Image Mode back to Grayscale.
7. Change Image Mode back to CMYK.
8. Unlock the background layer into a regular layer by double clicking it.
9. Using the Select menu, select color range of Shadows.
10. Select Inverse.
11. Delete.
12. Make a Color Overlay of the original orange. It should now look something like this:

13. Drag this into your original file. Now the layer is in one color and is now printable.

I hope this was helpful. There might be an easier way so please let me know if you are aware of it. Thanks for reading! If you have a chance, please check out all my active designs on the left side of the page before you go. :)

Gratitude

2009-05-25T16:21:00.004-05:00

I am overcome with gratitude for all the support given to me in regards to my latest Shirt.Woot design. Rain Dance has appeared to have struck a chord with many, many people. Maybe it's the emotion that rain evokes that people are relating to. Maybe it's the romance. Maybe it's dance itself. There is something sad but comforting about rain, and it made sense to me to mix that with romance. Sometimes sadness and romance go hand in hand. I think the color scheme makes you wonder about the story of these two aqueous characters. But whatever the reason, I'm extremely pleased to have made something that I'm proud of and that is also well received by a large audience. OMG, it CAN be done. You don't have to sell out to get a lot of votes.

A very good friend of mine commented in the Rain Dance thread about how she is so glad she, my other good friends and John (boyfriend at the time, lol) got together and bought me my Wacom tablet two years ago. That was around a year before Derbies became my weekly routine. It was an awesome graduation gift. I graduated from college when I was 29, so I and everyone else in my life was very glad I was finally finished. Reading that comment made me nostalgic and thankful for my friends. Anyway I got so nostalgic that I searched for pictures of the event.

Anyway I just thought that was funny. Again, I'm very thankful for all of the support I get. Thanks guys! <3

Words (and Tee Shirts)

2009-05-20T11:39:00.002-05:00

Sorry I'm a little late in updating. I've been having some trouble lately getting motivated to do things. Last week was a rough one for me. It was a week with a lot of words. Words affect me more than touch, more than gifts, more than money. And the childhood saying that they don't hurt like sticks and stones is just not true. Last week I was wounded by them and I wounded others with them. But that wasn't all, words of comfort and revelation came to me from both familiar and unexpected places. The givers alleviated me,and some even revealed, quite beautifully and astoundingly, how well they connect with me.

But even with the alleviation and astoundingness, the week left me with a residue and low serotonin levels. And for me, when I get like that, it's hard to get on with day to day things. I haven't gotten this way in a while--at least not in the past couple of years. I'm not good at forcing feelings or restraining them, so the only thing I've learned how to do is let time have its way.

I'm sure there are those out there that are thinking "Good grief I just wanted to read about tee shirts! Geez!" So I'll move on to that. :)

Two new designs are up at Shirt.Woot: Octo System and They're So Good Together. Octo is still putting up a fight for the fog, so if you haven't got your vote in for that one and want to--please do! Now even! LOL.

I decided to try out Piranha Still Life, which printed at Tee Fury earlier in the year on Teextile.

And last but not least, I submitted Half Full Wins to goodjoe. This is the first time to sub there, and so far the folks there have been very welcoming. I changed the design a bit by making it only two colors and I gave two placement options. One is small and in the "pocket" area, and the other is large and centered like it was in the ol' Optimism Derby.

I've got a stack of more designs that need homes, so I'll try to keep this thing updated with all the links. I appreciate all of you that are supportive. I have unexpectedly made some incredible bonds with people from this tee shirt world. How awesome!

Design Rut

2009-05-11T11:15:00.004-05:00

Remember my last entry? You know the one that was all about inspiration? Yeah this entry is the opposite. The theme for me the past few days is uninspired. I'm so uninspired, this will probably be a short blog entry. See, I'm even writing in short sentences. Seriously though, I think I'm in a rut right now mentally, physically, creatively, blah blah blah. I've spent the past couple of months designing until my brain bled, and the only fruit to show for it is a handful of designs that are just under par. I know there will be times like this and I should stop whining about it, keep my chin up, etc, but I'm freaking exhausted. This is how bad it is: yesterday I did housework all day long and I actually enjoyed it. I was ecstatic about cooking something new, and I wasn't even upset that it didn't turn out that great. (Turns out artichokes are tricky.) Normally I rush through housework on Sundays in order to get a chance to sit down and design. Yesterday I didn't even open Photoshop.

Anyway, I'll get over it and get back to looking like TOBIASFONSECA's character here:

I'll get back to designing and hopefully work my way through the rut, but I think tonight I'm going to cook Apple Pecan Stuffed Chicken with a Pear Arugula Salad.

Updates and Inspiration

2009-05-03T10:17:00.010-05:00

Artists seem to have different ways of getting inspired. My dad always observes his surroundings. He sees compositions in his environment whether it's a phenomenal sunset or if it's a collection of knick-knacks that my mom has displayed on the mantel. I've done this as well. Silver Lining, Purple Rain, and Buffalo Sunset were inspired by seeing many dramatic cloud scenes. I know some artists, myself included find inspiration in nostalgia. Perhaps we find comfort in commemorating a beloved toy or game. Another springboard is a good themed contest. Lately though, I find myself being inspired the most from perusing and admiring other artists' work.

I've heard it said that to be a good writer, one must also be well-read. I believe the same is true for artists. In my opinion, it's a good investment of time to keep up with various sites and the artists and designs that they feature. It's also good to score and vote for designs to see what could be breaking through in the future. Doing so really helps me define styles and mindsets to experiment with later. It's almost like keeping a pantry stocked with key ingredients. Want to make an oversized character collage? How about mixing MissMonster's line quality with Wotto's facial expressions and RecycledWax's color combination? Infuse your own personality in it, and you might have one delicious meal. Now you guys should know I don't mean straight-up copy people. It just helps to clarify in your mind how to approach a new design instead of just staring at a blank screen for hours trying to force magic to happen.

With all this in mind I'd like to take the time to feature two designs that I find myself going back to frequently. They are each done by a different artist and each artist is consistant in creating skillful and inspiring pieces. The first is Mother of the Sea by the very clever and talented Flying Mouse. I love, love, love Mermaids, so that might have weighted my affection for this, but aside from that it's the illustration style that keeps me coming back to it. I think it's the fine brown inking that I like the best. One day I'd like to achieve a drawing with the fine detail and quality of this.

The next design is by Leon Ryan. The first time I looked through his portfolio site I just sort of sat there with my mouth gaping open for a few minutes. Here, look at it--you'll see what I mean: http://www.leonryan.com/ I couldn't find the title for this piece, but I'm thinking it must be Apocalypse or something. Anyway I chose it because I like the 1940's look to it. I'm also impressed with how he mixed halftones, textures, and simple solid shapes without it clashing. That's hard to do. The thing I would like to learn from Leon is his use of clean, thick outlines and simple shading and highlighting. He can do a lot with a limited color palette, and that comes in handy when creating possible shirt designs.

Those are just two I pulled out of my mental vault. There are many more that inspire me. The only drawback to this method of inspriration I have found is that sometimes it's hard to define your own style. I struggle with this, and I've heard others mention they struggle as well. The only consolations I can come up with is that it will come in time, and maybe it's good to not be a one trick pony.

Do you feel too overwhelmed and don't know where to start browsing? I know of two individuals who have exquisite and cultivated yet cutting-edge taste in the tee shirt design genre: AdderXYU of SingulariTee and MJ (aka geekfactor12) of compete-tee-tion. Until you get the hang of it, I can honestly say you can trust them to find the good stuff for you. I've given them a permanent spot over there to the left so you can easily find them.

Well I'm just too selfish to end this without mentioning my own stuff, so here's the latest. ;P Shirt.Woot's Do-Over Derby is going on right now, and somehow I have six designs in there. Only five actually got Honorable Mentions so I guess they just couldn't get enough of me and threw another in there. I wish Woot voters couldn't get enough of me because at this moment, none of my designs are in the top ten. Wanna help them out? Here are some links:

The Rabbit's Weird Dream
Eel Charging Station
Inspired by Dr. Who
Kung Fu Hangout
The Weeping Willow
The Last Unitops

Shirtfight's latest and greatest theme is Video Games vs ?. I fortunately had a design partially done for this so I changed it up a bit and let'em have it. Yes, I know she looks like a poster child for Hot Topic, but at least it's got some WWII nose art flare to it, right? See, a guy could wear it so he could impress his friends with the blatent display of T & A, and a girl could wear it to show that she's cool enough to wear a gamer shirt. Win-win. Score quickly if you like it, 'cause this contest ends Thursday.

I also put a couple of designs at Teextile. One is the oldie-but-goodie Carbon Butterfly and the other is the newer Raining Cats and Dogs. Check them out over there with all my other cool stuff on the left.

Okay, it's taken half of my Sunday to write this, so I better stop, lol. See, that's why I only update around once a week. I can be extremely thorough with OCD tendencies. As always, thanks for stopping by. :)

Cameesa Pics and Trying to Win the Loitery

2009-04-26T18:03:00.000-05:00

Cameesa has started featuring an artist every week with a banner on the home page and a link to an interview. They have already highlighted quakerninja and thatrobert, and I'm the lucky one to be next. Please check it out at cameesa.com Monday, April 27th through Friday, May 1st.

Speaking of Cameesa, Gamer Mother arrived last week so I'm fulfilling my promise to show pics. The green couch color was not really what I had intended, but it still looks adequate.

I mentioned awhile back about finding a good tutorial for vectorizing textures here. I had some fun with my newly learned technique creating the background for this design below. Those are actually bricks on my house. LOL.

Remember those Guinness commercials? I always liked them, so I thought it would be comical to parody it with cats. If you like it, please score it at Loiter-Ink where they're having a contest worth $1000 called "The Loitery."

This week at Woot, I awoke from my apathetic stupor and took the Derby seriously this time. I don't think my seriousness was enough for a win, but it's holding steady in the top ten, and I'm very proud of it at least. The theme was Steampunk, so at first I was very apprehensive since mechanical things are not my strong suit. I accepted the challenge though, brainstormed with John on my lunch break and by very late Thursday night managed to come up with this copper lion.

That's all for now. Thanks for being awesome and visiting! :)

Gamer Mother Available to Buy and New DBH Sub

2009-04-21T08:16:00.000-05:00

Hey gang. Got a quick update for you. First, Gamer Mother is now available to buy at Cameesa. I haven't received mine yet, but as soon as I do, I promise to take pictures and post them here. I've gotten a couple of comments from people who have received them and so far they seem pleased. I added a clickable image over there to the left that will get you to the page to order.

Next, I'm putting faith in the old saying, "When one door closes, another will open." I know, I know. Totally cliche, but I who wouldn't love for Design By Human's door to be swung wide open for them? I would faint with happiness. "The Eye is the Window" didn't quite make it at Shirtfight, but at least they are cool enough to give artists their designs right back to them. Please check it out, vote for, and comment on this design if you like. DBH is free to join and it's free to vote. :)

One last thing, I've added the capability to subscribe to this blog. There should be a control in the left column. I've been honored with a couple requests for that, so the least I could do is drag and drop it over there. I've also updated my flickr portfolio as well, so feel free to browse. There should be a link around the same area. Thanks for following me guys. I'll try to keep it interesting over here. :)

Photoshop Watercolor Tutorial

2009-04-15T16:22:00.000-05:00

I'd like to take this time to post my research in brush strokes in Photoshop. I know that when I'm trying to teach myself something, the best resources are usually tutorials that awesome people were generous enough to share. So I'm going to try to be awesome too.

Now, keep in mind I'm not an expert and I might be going about things all wrong. It won't hurt my feelings at all if you know of a better way and comment about it. As a matter of fact, I encourage it! LOL.

For the last design I finished, I wanted a watercolor effect. I debated on buying some watercolor supplies and doing some brushstrokes the old school way, but I would have to clean up my office in order to make room for that project. So instead I just spent hours and hours tweeking different brush settings. I found a lot of tutorials that required you to download brushes, but I didn't want something to use like a stamp. I wanted something that would allow me to simulate painting with a brush. I'm still hunting the perfect settings, but I'm getting closer.

The following instructions will help you achieve a brush stroke similar to this: I use Photoshop CS, btw.

In the original brushes that came with CS and CS2, choose the one that looks like the one that says 100. See below:

In the "Brushes" tab in the top right, choose the following settings:
Shape Dynamics: Minimum Diameter 20%. Everything else 0
Texture: Choose "Molecular"
Duel Brush: Follow this pic:

Other Dynamics: Opacity Jitter: 26%, Flow Jitter: 20%
Wet Edges: Checked
Smoothing: Checked

Keeping one color per layer, and using that brush, paint away. Since it's a bit transparent, paint over your strokes and the overlapping parts will be darker.

*Edit: You may need to adjust the over all opacity of the brush stroke as well. I can't recall if I did this or not, but I think I did.

If you plan on submitting this to a site that does NOT offer simulated process printing, you'll need to convert each layer to a bitmap.

Here's my process:
Create a new file the same size as what I'm working on. CMYK is fine. 300 dpi.
Drag a layer onto it
Flatten it
Desaturate it
Adjust Brightness and Contrast until you're pleased with the lights and darks
Change mode to Grayscale
Change mode to Bitmap: Output 300px per inch, Halftone Screen, frequency 40 lines per inch, angle 45 degrees, shape cross.
(Keep in mind the website's printing capabilities. They're all different. You may have to do less lines per inch.)
Change mode back to Grayscale
Change mode back to CMYK
Unlock layer by double clicking
Select Color Range -->Shadows
Select Inverse
Delete
Change Color Overlay Layer Style to match what color you need it to be.
Put it back in your original file.

The finished version will look similar to this:

Just repeat these steps for each color. I hope this was useful, and please let me know if I'm informing incorrectly. Please check out the finished design here at Shirtfight! :)

The Eye is the Window

Bettas and EmoTendencies

2009-04-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

Greetings and salutations! Not much to report shirt-wise for now except that I’m currently training myself how to use textures. For those of you that are trying to learn it as well, I found a great tutorial. Take a look:

http://tracksix.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/tutorial-vector-texture/

I had to ignore the last part since it involved Illustrator, and I only have Photoshop. Photoshop is a big beast on its own though so learning it is quite enough for me for now. Once I get a few textures done, I intend to make them available here for free—no strings attached. I don’t know about you guys but I hate worrying about whether or not someone will sue me for using their stuff. I would rather help people out. All I ask is that you stay tuned and follow my blog! :)

I also found a tee texture Photoshop file through browsing the Threadless forums. This, in my opinion really helps spice up presentations.

http://rapidshare.com/files/84616902/tee_texture_master.zip.html

One other quick tee notification is that I’ve altered the colors of “Betta” a bit and put it up at Uneetee for voting. Some of you may remember this printed at Tee Fury last year. That’s one of many good things about Tee Fury. You get your rights back! :)

Since I don’t have a lot of tee related news, I’ll use the rest of this space to bare my soul a bit. I’ve yet to really do this in my blog, so I apologize if it seems to come out of nowhere. I guess I just had to get comfortable in this cyber macrocosm first. I used to write and want to be a fiction writer, but that went the way of my other impractical ideas like playing the violin and being a Disney 2D animator, LOL. Plus, I make too many grammatical errors. Anyway, back to soul baring:

I think I have dual personalities. I can be a silly and happy person, blissfully gliding through the busy but fulfilling routine of my life without pondering too much. All in all I’m quite satisfied with things. I can go for weeks simply wading in conversations with my loved ones. Most of the time I'm content with treading in the subjects of the weather, work, and general day-to-day events.

But sometimes I like to swim a little deeper. There’s a part of me that craves deep musings and analyses about why we all are the way we are. What are our character flaws and where did they come from? What are our deepest regrets and why? Did we end up the way we always thought we would as a child? Why were some of our most cherished relationships broken and is there any way to fix them? When I was in high school I had two friends who were eerily just like me. We listened to the Cranberries and Smashing Pumpkins and brooded over unrequited love or our discontent with our authority figures. My biggest regret in life is losing them. And it was incontestably my fault for losing them. Sometimes I’m overcome with the reality that I’ve lost them forever, but it comforts me that I’ve been able to make many new and equally beloved friends.

For some reason I was surprised to see that I’m in a minority. There aren’t many people that have the same need to view their soul with a microscope. So a lot of times I just sort of push that part of me down in a pocket somewhere and just try to be a normal, carefree, and fun person. I can be good at that too, and it is indeed less stressful—less anxiety. As a matter of fact, it’s good for me to practice this, because a side effect of my contemplative habits is anxiety. I need non-worrisome and assured people, one being my husband, to help me overcome anxiety. I credit my ability to control it to him.

But sometimes I miss my old emo self. Sometimes I just feel like exposing myself to repressed feelings and discontent with past and current unfortunate situations in my life. I always wonder—is it better to binge and purge negative feelings in order to heal, or is it better to forget them and move past them, even though they may linger in a pocket somewhere? I’ve been trying the latter method for a couple of years now. It seems to work, but lately I’ve been backsliding. Maybe I’m just going through a phase.

Gamer Mother Prints!

2009-03-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

The long awaited n00b pwning grandma finally made her way to a shirt! A big, big, big thank you goes to all of you that not only financially supported this, but also to those that advertised it. I'm thankful for all the sig images, forum posts and tweets. This will be my 7th shirt to print this year, which makes me well on my way to my goal of 12. It's been a great year so far. :)

At Shirtfight, The Walrus and the Highwheeler didn't win, but it did give me another Heavyweight nod. El Presidente there has given me another nickname. Online I'm mostly known as Loopy or iLoop, but he's gone a different route with "Alabama Slamma." LOL, I love nicknames.

Non-Tee Current Events: John and I finally finished our master bathroom facelift! It took two weeks, but it was well worth it. So far, since we bought the house a little over a year ago we've also made improvements to the master bedroom, the kitchen, and the breakfast nook and I would have to say this is the best upgrade. I'll leave you with some visual evidence of the bathroom's journey from the 90's to the 00's.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Cameesa Changes Things Up

2009-03-21T11:44:00.000-05:00

Hey gang. I've got good news and bad news about Cameesa. The good news is that it now only takes $10 to support a design. That also includes getting a shirt if it prints. That's a very good deal. The bad news is that it divided the support I had for Gamer Mother in half. For example, if you originally had $20 invested in the design, $10 dollars was deducted and put in your account balance. If you'd like the extra $10 to go back into the design, you need to add it back to your support. Please consider doing this, because before the changes, Gamer Mother only needed $120 more for it to go to print. Now it needs $270. :(

I'm a top ten heavyweight at ShirtFight.com! Check it out!
http://www.shirtfight.com/blog/entry/top_10_heavyweights_march_19th/

Non-Tee Current Events: We're still working on giving our master bathroom a face lift. I'll post pics as soon as we're done.

Random Me Trivia: I love this time of year because the azaleas are about to bloom. These shrubs become filled so chock-full of blooms that you can't even see any green. All you see is a bright fushia cloud. Awesomeness.

Yardwork Pics

2009-03-14T11:02:00.000-05:00

Hey folks! I'm sitting here in my messy and yet-to-be-decorated office staring at the rain. It's peaceful--well, once I put the cat up. He kept trying to nom my stuff in here. The rain is good because once it stops we can put Weed and Feed on our lawn. Speaking of yard work, last weekend John and I cleaned up our front flower/shrub bed. Check out these pics:

Before (terrible, right?)

Step One: Clear as much crap out as possible

Step Two: Put down weed fabric and border

Step Three: Put down pretty wood chips. Voila! No more ugly.

We had an audience too. LOL.

Oh and I recently got my betta a new tank. Before he just had a plain bowl with no air filter. I'm lazy and I got tired of changing out the water so now both me and Sesshomaru will be happier.

As usual, please check out all of my active designs on the top left. This week I plan to submit some more stuff. I've got two designs I have in mind for Threadless and I might even sub something at Design By Humans. Remember Snow Angel? I'm going to take out the snowflakes and add some flourishes and other elements to the background. I'm not sure if it will be DBH-worthy but I'm going to try. Later folks! Gotta get ready to paint the master bath.

The All New Shirtfight.com and Other Tee Happenings

2009-03-07T08:54:00.000-06:00

Sometimes at night, as I'm falling asleep, I get bizarre ideas for tshirt designs. Take last week for example. As I was nodding off, I got this vision of a green and purple umbrella that had rain coming falling out from inside of it instead of falling on top of it. I guess being half asleep helps me connect more with my imagination, because it just ran off with me. I added cats and dogs as rain drops and a weather vein on top of the umbrella. I fell fully asleep soon after that.

I heard it through the grapevine a couple weeks ago that a new theme oriented tshirt website was about to launch. I was informed that if I sign up for their emails, I would know five days in advance of their launch what the theme would be. I liked this idea. That's one thing that makes Woot so hard is that you only have one day in advance to come up with and execute something win-worthy. So, I found out last Sunday that the very first theme would be "Eating Junk Food Before Bed." I immediately remembered my umbrella idea and decided to develop that for the theme.

I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night working on it. Thursday night I stayed up working on it after a friend's birthday gathering in hopes to be able to submit it at midnight when they launched. Keep in mind I have a normal 8-5 job on top of this. To sum it up, the site had server issues at midnight, but I was able to submit it the next day. I'm very pleased with how it came out. It's now one of my favorites.

Please vote for it here: Raining Cats and Dogs

Working on that all week used up all my energy. I don't think I'll be able to do a Derby design this go-round. Today is yard work day!! John and I are going to be cleaning all the grass and weeds out of our front flower bed (well, really it's a shrub bed,) putting plastic over it, a border around it, and covering it with wood chips. We figured we better do this now before the warmer weather inspires more grass to grow. We went to Lowes yesterday to get all the supplies. We have some money saved for a riding mower and were hoping perhaps we could get one, but sadly we discovered we're going to need to save more. Did you know just a bag for one of those things costs $300?? Good Lord.

Remember Dance of Kitsune? It was on Threadless for awhile, but I don't think it quite did well enough so I took it off there and put it on Uneetee. Please check it out and give it a vote. I've received some comments about how they would enjoy it more on a different color, but I truly like the orange. I dunno. I might sub it again on sand if Uneetee lets me.

Here's where to vote for it: Dance of Kitsune

Please check out all of my active designs on the top left over there and consider voting, supporting and/or buying--especially Gamer Mother on Cameesa. It only needs 9 more supporters for it to print. If you do not have an account with Cameesa, and you click on one of my links here to sign up, you'll get $5 credit. Therefore it would only take $15 to support it instead of the usual $20. I would love to see that printed.

Oh--one more thing. I decided to take down my Spreadshirt shop. I haven't had a sale since around November of last year. I'll keep it saved though, and if anybody has any requests just let me know and I can easily activate it again.

Thanks for reading!

It Snowed Today in Alabama

2009-03-01T14:44:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I spent the whole day volunteering at the 2009 Montgomery Addy Awards. My friends Leigh and Patricia are graphic designers and they are always involved in coordinating the gala every year. This is the third year that my friend Sherri and I helped them out. It's fun to support them and it's a great excuse to dress up! The four of us enjoy event planning (last year we did my wedding in May and Leigh's wedding in November) so much that we joke around about starting a business. Anyway the Addy's turned out great and Leigh and Pats cleaned up this year with accolades to be proud of.

So I was exhausted from yesterday, and was a complete zombie when my dog nudged me to get my @ss out of bed and let her outside. I stumbled to the back door with my eyes half closed when--BEHOLD! Everything was white!!! I think I literally jumped back a step and called for John to wake up and come see it. He immediately pulled out his camcorder to capture it. Y'all just don't understand. It's rare for us to see snow. We're lucky to see even flurries that last 30 minutes. The weather in the south is so strange and unpredictable. Yesterday it got up to 70 degrees and less than 24 hours later it snowed. The day before yesterday there were tornados. John thinks it's an impending apocalypse.

Back to tshirts (which is why we're all here at this blog, right?) Please vote for my newest Shirt.Woot design, Eel Charging Station! I'm sad 'cause it fell out of the fog last night. Also, if you're still considering Eclipse at Ink-Hound, think fast because Monday will be the last day it will be for sale. You can even get it on a hoodie! Both of these designs are featured on the left over there.

Eclipse on Ink-Hound!

2009-02-24T09:09:00.000-06:00

Please check out Eclipse on www.ink-hound.com this week! It will be on sale until next Tuesday, and then it will be gone forever. If you're an artist, I would recommend subbing to this site. So far they've been nice to work with.

I think I finally got rid of the virus that was on my computer. The past two scans I did informed me that no files were infected, so hopefully I'm in the clear.

Gamer Mother on Cameesa!

2009-02-21T16:37:00.001-06:00

I got a lot of encouraging comments from people on Woot about this design. A few suggested I put this on Cameesa, so I took their advice. Please consider supporting it!

Randomness: I know that Kanye West can be an ass sometimes, but I LOVE THIS SONG!!! Love Lockdown

Current Events: My computer is SICK! It caught a Trojan Horse called the Pakes Virus and I've been running every legitimate kind of virus scanning and anti-spyware software I can find to get rid of this crap. Man, my computer is my life. Now I'm concerned that my personal information has been compromised. As soon as I get some time I've got to run all three credit reports. Joy.

I Got a Print at Uneetee and I'm on Twitter!

2009-02-16T10:48:00.000-06:00

Spirit of the Stag got printed! I'm so thrilled to be on Uneetee! I hope that gray looks more blue in person though. I only have myself to blame though since I sent them the pantones. Gosh it's hard to pick out colors. Anyway, if I understand their process, this shirt will be $12 for 2 weeks and then it will go up, so snag it soon if you want it.

It seems like twitter is all the rage right now, so I'm giving it a try. I figure it's a good way to announce when I've submitted something somewhere. Follow me at http://twitter.com/theinfinityloop

Kiwi Printed and I'm Going to Dragon Con

2009-02-13T07:56:00.000-06:00

A big thanks to all of you that voted for and supported "Lament of the Kiwi" on Shirt.Woot! It's up for sale now, so check it out over on the top left. There's a funny topic going on in my thread about me being from the south--but don't go there hungry. You'll start salivating for things like fried green tomatoes and purple hull peas.

Today's random geekness: I'm going to Dragon Con this year! For those that are not geeky enough to know what that is, it's a giant Sci Fi convention that's held in at Atlanta, Georgia every year. It spans across four large hotels. A few of my friends have gone the past two years, but there were always reasons preventing John and me from going. However, this year we've already registered, booked a hotel and picked out characters to cosplay. Yes, I'm going to dress up. No, not as Princess Leia in the gold bikini you perverts.

I'm hoping to see Scott Bakula--not "Sam Beckett" Bakula but "Jonathan Archer" Bakula. I'm one of those anomolies that likes Star Trek Enterprise, which a lot of real trekkies loathe. If John gets jealous he can't say anything because I know he's secretly hoping to see Battlestar Gallactica's Tricia Helfer. :)

Speaking of Scott Bakula, this is one of the funniest shirts I've ever seen. I'm seriously considering getting it. You can get it at www.loiterink.com.

Apocalypse Bear

2009-02-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago John, my friend Daniel and I worked together at the technical help desk at our college. We had some good times there, so John and I commemorated it with a web comic. Sadly I don't have time to keep up with it anymore, but we and our friends still remember it fondly--especially a character called Apocalypse Bear.

I loved Care Bears as a kid and I still do--well, the classic Care Bears anyway. They recently changed the look of them and I'm not too keen on the redesign. One day John and I were in Toys R Us and we passed by one of those toy crane machines. It had a Share Bear in it. This one to be precise:

It took two separate attempts, but John managed to retrieve it. For some reason, our deranged minds came up with the idea that this bear was a top secret engineered nuclear weapon that escaped and hid himself in the machine. His "Care Bear Stare" caused a mushroom cloud of destruction, hence his new symbol on his belly. His name was not Share Bear. He was Apocalypse Bear.

In the comic, he takes refuge with us. He's loyal to us and he knows how to pwn n00bs on XBox Live, but he is also very dangerous. He once blew up an "Allmart" because they had terrible customer service. LOL. Originally I drew him with markers and I didn't have a lavender marker, so I made him blue. However, once I learned Photoshop I did the comic in that and changed him to his proper color.

Anyway the point of this story (aside from making you wonder if I'm on drugs) is to brag about my friend Leigh. For Christmas this past year, she took a Crystal Collection Share Bear and altered it to have "Pocky's" mushroom cloud belly. She even went so far as to put bombs on his feet and a scythe on his butt (true to the comic.) Check it out!

Now, we have a real Apocalypse Bear. We try not to make him mad.

Trying Out New Sites

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-06:00

The first thing I would like to mention is that on this Thursday one of my shirts will be featured at Tee Fury! Here's a sneak peak:

Some of you may remember that one from S.W.'s Video Game Derby. MJ was my curator for this, and I've got to sing praises for her. She was a joy to work with! So, please check this out on Thursday if you're nostalgic for Mario, love impressionism, or maybe if you like "Little Shop of Horrors." Ha ha.

Things have been strange and unsettling at Shirt.Woot lately. Aside from my New Year's resolution of getting twelve prints (from anywhere, not just Woot) this year, the atmosphere there has given me plenty of incentive to try out other tee shirt sites. The ones I've been eyeing lately are Chimpogo, Fair and Bare, Springleap, and Inkhound. Most of my designs I'll be subbing are recycled. Between my full time job and keeping up with my house, I don't have a whole lot of time to make new ones. :(

So far I've got two at Chimpogo: my poor pig that people are probably just going to vote for so that they don't have to see it in my sig anymore. (This is the third and probably final attempt for him, bless his heart.) And I also subbed my little guy from the Panic Derby.

I've got other plans for the other websites soon, and I'll post them on here as soon as they become available for voting. I think I'm going to have to create an Access database for all of this stuff, LOL.

I'll leave you all with some current events that are non-Tee related. This past weekend, my girlfriends and I went to Atlanta, Georgia to do some shopping. I went to Ikea for the first time. It was amazing!! Loved it. For those that aren't familiar, Ikea is a Swedish contemporary furniture/home decor store--but store just isn't the proper word. It's more like an amusement park. It's one store that's the size of an entire mall. Their prices are very reasonable too. It was so fun that I think I'm going to try to make annual--if not semi-annual trips there from now on. John and I are going to Atlanta for Valentine's Day, so he'll get to experience Ikea then for the first time too. Anyway, fun times. :)

A Little Bit About Me

2009-01-24T11:19:00.000-06:00

Since I don't have any new tee shirt stuff to post about at the moment, I figured I'd just post some random stuff about me in general.

Current Randomness:
I just bought an iphone and I'm in love with it. The other night, my sadistic insomniac cat woke me up at 3am, so I picked up the phone and checked my email without even sitting up. It was awesome.

John and I are addicted to the show called The Big Bang Theory. Last weekend we watched all of season one on dvd, and now our dvr box is filled with the entire season two. It's unbelievable just how much we relate to this show because we, and all of our friends are geeks and very proud of it. If you've ever been addicted to RPGs, cosplayed at a convention, had a LAN party, played old school Mario games for nostalgia, (I could go on) you would enjoy this show too.

Deep Thoughts of the Moment:
I'm 31, and I get disgusted sometimes of how I handled my 20s. Lately I've been through a little rough patch wishing I could go back in time.

Funny Facts:
Sometimes, if I find something extremely funny, I'm overcome by uncontrollable laugher and I literally fall down--even if I'm in a public place. One sad time when I was broke and couldn't afford a home connection to the internet, I went to the public library just to catch up on my favorite forum. (I know. Very sad.) Anyway one of my good friends posted something about Dakota Fanning and I came very close to toppling out of my chair. The librarian said "shhhh."

Okay, now that I got all of that out of my system, please check out my newest Woot entry over there in the top left! LOL. :D

Vincent Collab a Success

2009-01-18T11:46:00.000-06:00

Thank you to all of you who voted for "Adder-Loop's" "Vincent's Alternative!" It took third place and is now on sale. I have to say, and I think many others would too, the Alternate History Derby was the most enjoyable in a while.

Also, I've recently updated my portfolio, so feel free to check it out here. It will always reside over there on the left as well.

Thank you for all of your votes!!

2009-01-11T11:28:00.001-06:00

This is a classic example of how EVERY vote counts. "Life Renewed" won third place by ONE vote!! Thank you everyone! So far I'm keeping up with my New Year's Resolution. I've made my January quota. It's up for sale at Shirt.Woot. Snag it today for $10, or $15 after today.

I've got a couple of other subs up for the current Derby, "Alternate History." With the combination of Woot being late posting the theme and me just not being very good with history, it took me forever to come up with something. John was being silly and suggested "Boston Butt Party". After laughing for five minutes straight, I began working on it.

I soon found out though that unfortunately, Boston Butt must only be a southern recipe, 'cause people weren't getting the pun. It's a delicious and fattening pork roast, in case you didn't know.

Anyway, after spending about 4 hours on it, I quit. Then I decided on doing "Salem Beauty Pageants." I saw a great portfolio a while back of featured Tee Fury Artist, Leon Ryan and wanted to try out his style--particulary of this piece of his. It's a fun and cheerful style, but I think I need to practice because it took me eight hours to do. O.O

In the mean time, tee shirt connoisseur AdderXYU contacted me to suggest I do Van Gogh with an injured eye instead of ear. Adder publishes the very informative blog SingulariTee, so I knew he knew what he was talking about. I took him up on it. It turned out to be a great idea, because it's doing very well right now. Thanks Adder!!

You can check out both "Salem Beauty Pageants" and "Vincent's Alternative" on the top left side over there. Again, thank you everyone for your votes, comments, and encouragement!

Shameless Begging and Threadless Submissions!

2009-01-07T07:44:00.000-06:00

I'm so close!! If any of you out there were on the fence about my Phoenix and have not voted, please vote. I think I'm about to lose my place at third and that's just heartbreaking to me. :( However, the sub that's currently competing with me is very good and I have a lot of respect for the artist. The competitive and broke side of me still wants to win though!! ;)

I've got three Threadless subs up that could use your love. Some of you guys may remember these from Woot, and if you liked them then, here's a chance to support them again. It was convenient that Threadless' current contest theme is typography since I had "Juicy" and "Betta" laying around from Woot's Art as Text Derby. I thought I might as well try them out. Sesshomoru makes an appearance in the "Betta" comp. :) I had to change his color though because he clashed.

Life Renewed

2009-01-02T14:14:00.000-06:00

Despite complaints of the alleged over usage of the Phoenix, I drew my favorite mythical creature anyway. Apparently though there might be a risk that Woot will spontaneously start rejecting Phoenixes for no reason other than the same randomness from long ago when they spontaneously rejected James Cho's flying penguin. We'll see.

Prints from 2008

2008-12-31T19:49:00.002-06:00

Buffalo Sunset - Shirt.Woot August
Betta - Tee Fury October
Carbon Butterfly - Tee Fury November
Like a Flame - Shirt.Woot November

New Year's Resolution

2008-12-31T13:14:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Christmas was great but it exhausted me. >.<

I've decided that my New Year's resolution will be to have an average of one tee shirt print a month next year. In order to get a good start, I've submitted six shirt designs to various places in the past two days! I'm hoping to have a Tee Fury print soon.

BadAsHellClothing.com's contest ends today and I managed to squeak something through. The contest is to design a shirt for a band called "No Talent." I know it's last minute, but if you read this today, please give it a score! So far I think there are only four entries counting mine. I tried out a different style for this one so it was a learning experience for me.

Threadless Sub

2008-12-16T19:32:00.001-06:00

I'm also trying out what used to be called "Canine Clock-In" on Threadless. I've renamed it simply "8 to 5." It's up for voting now. The only changes I've made to this one are the colors. Threadless doesn't have an olive shirt but they do have a color called military. It's pretty close so I only had to make some minor tweaks to the colors. For those of you that enjoyed this one, please give it a good score. Thanks bunches. :)

New and Improved Purple Rain

2008-12-15T21:12:00.000-06:00

I've revamped Purple Rain and put it up at DBH for voting. I hope you guys like the improvements. The lightning has more angles, I've cleaned up the clouds a bit, and I took advantage of DBH's oversized printing and filled up more of the shirt. Please check it out!

Optimistic Derby

2008-12-12T14:00:00.000-06:00

Hello all. I got a couple of new derby entries up to the left. Please check them out! I decided to be controversial and make one of them a very simplistic design. I just wanted to see what it felt like. Ha ha.

Oh, be watching Threadless for an entry of mine to go up for voting soon. Tired of this one yet? I'm not giving up. :P

For those of you that liked "Inspired By Purple Rain" you'll be glad to know that I'm redoing it (yes I'm making the lightning less FLACID) for DBH. I'll post as soon as I get it done.

I know I irresponsibly said that I was going to try to do some Christmas shirts for InfiniTEES, but sadly I have yet to have time. I still might be able to, but I better take back my promise. :(

Hey! Check out my trees!! :)

And lastly, here's something to make you smile. :D

New Addition to My Family

2008-12-05T11:52:00.000-06:00

Hey guys. I'd like to introduce you to my new pet!

I named him Sesshomaru, after a character from my favorite anime, Inuyasha. We call him Sesshy for short. :) I've wanted a betta for years and when I saw him and his beautiful sapphire color (not done justice by my picture) I had to take the plunge. I now have a dog, a cat, and a fish.

I'm very excited about Christmas coming up. John and I are hosting BOTH of our families at our house this year! My girlfriends and I had our bi-weekly craft night and made ornaments. I had so much fun. I'm pleased with how mine turned out. I used old gift bags, cardstock, ribbon, and various pearls and beads. My friend had a jarful of lovely antique beads that she let me use.

Cyber Monday All Week Long at InfiniTEES!

2008-12-01T21:59:00.001-06:00

Come check out my shop and get a cool discount this week. Click on this image below.

Also, thank you to all of you who voted for "Lust Is Like A Flame." Because of you, I have a second Shirt.Woot print. :) Here's how it printed if any of you are on the fence about buying it. If you'd like to buy it, please click on the link to the left.

Holiday Sale at InfiniTEES!

2008-11-26T14:26:00.000-06:00

Christmas shopping yet? Check out the sale going on at my shop! And I have more than just adult sized shirts there. Comfy Pearl makes a sweet baby design for bibs and onesies, and Underwater Book Light makes a cute kids' shirt! Anyway here are the codes:

Speaking of Christmas, in the near future I'm going to try to make a few Christmas shirts and put them in my shop so be on the lookout. And if you miss out on the sale going on right now, there's another one coming up. Also, I've had a lot of inquiries about size charts. If you click on the shirt you're interested in, that will take you to a page that includes a link to the appropriate size chart.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Mine has already kicked off. Last night we had friends come over and each bring a dish. I'm telling you, our posse can cook. We're all a bunch of computer geeks and one of them said we should all start a software business, but screw that--we should open up a restaurant!! LOL. Tonight John and I will head to my parents' house to enjoy Turkey Day with them. Then we'll officially bring on the holidays at 4am in the freezing weather for the ever-invigorating Black Friday shopping. I'm excited. :)

Woot's New Theme

2008-11-21T10:35:00.000-06:00

The theme for this week's Derby is "Cardinal Sins." I thought it was interesting, although I can't help but wonder if they need to even bother offering any of these in the kids' sizes. LOL. After my immediate thoughts of Full Metal Alchemist, the first of the seven that I thought of was lust. I don't know if that means anything, but oh well. If it does, it does. *evil grin* I pictured a very attractive woman with hair of flames. As I drew it I thought it would add to the composition if she were actually part of a candle. I also wanted to reference evil temptation somehow, so I incorporated the snake with the fruit in the candle holder. Then at the end I really wanted to drive the symbolism even further by placing the design in front of the heart, so I had to mirror it. Anyway it was funny doing this because as challenging as it was, I wanted both genders to be able to wear it. As I would post my WIP, the girls were telling me to be more conservative while the guys would tell me to lose the clothes--ha ha! It was very entertaining. Hopefully I managed to achieve a happy medium. Here's the design process.

If you like it, please vote for it after noon today by clicking it's image on the top left of the page.

On a different topic, I occasionally enjoy a good anime, and recently I watched the series Gurren Lagann on Sci Fi. It was phenomenal! It's a short series, but it's complete. It didn't feel like it drug on with filler episodes like some shows do. This one kept you on the edge of your seat the whole time. One thing I liked about it, besides the rich character development, artwork, plot, soundtrack, etc. (haha) is that it has elements that both genders can enjoy. It has explosions and fighting and violence as well as emotions, dialog, and love. Did I mention the soundtrack? I cry every time I hear this song. Check it out if you like opera AND hip hop. :) Oh and it's much better with a subwoofer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODb7fZFPTPY

Tee Fury Supports Orphans International Worldwide

2008-11-16T17:13:00.000-06:00

Today only, Tee Fury is selling a shirt designed by a collaboration of 20 artists for the cause of Orphans International Worldwide.

I was fortunate enough to be one of 20 artists to help contribute by giving them this butterfly.

Man, I've had a busy weekend. Yesterday was the sixth wedding I've been to this year. I don't understand, but there must have been something about 2008 to make people want to get married. I can't say too much because I was one of them (May 10th.) Anyway yesterday, two of my closest friends tied the knot and I was privileged to be a bridal attendant. The wedding was GORGEOUS, however now I'm exhausted. Both me and the bride did most of our wedding decor ourselves with the help of our crafting friends. So basically we've been working on wedding preparations since January. It's hard to believe it's all over now.

Lastly, I got an email a while back from a website called www.badashellclothing.com asking me to consider submitting something. They're having a Vintage Pinup Girl contest that sounded cool, so submitted this. Check it out!

Edited My Last Post

2008-11-10T08:01:00.000-06:00

Sorry guys, I realized I mixed up the types of shirts that I got. The Candy Coated Sticks of Happiness shirt was actually a heavyweight and the Typical Monday Morning was a lightweight. I fixed it in my post. Sorry about the confusion. >.<

Spreadshirt Pics, New WIP, and Bag of Crap

2008-11-09T16:49:00.000-06:00

Hey guys! Hope you got some time because this is a long post! As promised, here are some example pics of the designs I currently have available at InfiniTEES, my Spreadshirt store.

Comfy Pearl
Type Shown: Women's AA Brand (Other types available)
Size: L
My Comments: I thought the design placement was a little too low, so I have moved it up since I've ordered it. Other than that I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Typical Monday Morning
Type Shown: Women's Lightweight (Other types available)
Size: M
My Comments: These run bigger than AA. For example, I wear a WL in AA, but this shirt is a tad too big. It's comfortable though.

Candy Coated Sticks of Happiness
Type Shown: Women's Heavyweight (Other types available)
Size: M
My Comments: Similar to Women's Lightweight, these run bigger than AA. For example, I wear a WL in AA, but this shirt is a tad too big. It's comfortable though.

Underwater Book Light
Type Shown: Men's Lightweight (Other types available)
Size: XXL
My Comments: I got this one for my husband. He probably could have worn an XL. Also, a girl friend of mine usually wears a Men's XXL in AA shirts, but this was too big on her. As far as the design color and placement, I think this is my favorite. I'm very impressed with how it came out and I think you'll be too. :)

I still haven't got a chance to add Tee Fury's Betta or Carbon Butterfly because I'm still trying to figure out if I can submit them to Uneetee. I thought I couldn't since they've been printed, but I saw a design for sale there that has also been on Tee Fury. Hmm. If anyone knows anything about this, please comment.

Now, I'd like to show you something I began working on. I haven't decided where I'll submit it when I'm done. I'll be posting updates of this as much as I can. Please feel free to comment.

I got my first Bag of Crap in. No iPod or flat screen, but still some pretty cool stuff.

And last but not least, I'll leave you with a funny pic. Here's my cat enjoying SNL's Presidential Bash. XD

Redeeming the Pig and InfiniTEES News

2008-11-07T07:42:00.001-06:00

Finally! Shirt.Woot is starting their Do-Over Derby today. I'm ecstatic to have three honorable mentions make an appearance in this Derby--especially one called "The Pig Fights Back" from the infamous Luau Derby. For those that aren't familiar with the pig, it battled in and out of the fog throughout the derby finally to end up in fourth place. I have to say the results were a bit surprising to a lot of us. It's so great that the pig has another chance. Please check it out once the Derby starts at noon today!

A few of you have been browsing and inquiring about my shirts at my Spreadshirt shop, InfiniTEES. Recently, I purchased an example of each design so I can do my own quality check. I got the shirts in yesterday, and this weekend I plan to take pictures of them. That way you can get a better idea of what you would be ordering. I'm also going to be adding the recent two Tee Fury shirts to them for those who missed out. I'm going to put up Carbon Butterfly in both colors and in both Mens' and Women's sizes since there were some who were disappointed they couldn't get the color scheme they wanted.

Another Tee Fury Print!!!

2008-11-02T22:07:00.000-06:00

I was so shocked tonight when I got an email from Tee Fury saying they were going to print Carbon Butterfly! I'm surprised they're printing this so soon after the Betta. That's okay though! I'm not complaining. That's great news since I was a little depressed that Gamer Mother didn't last in the fog at Shirt.Woot. It also makes up for the crazy weekend John and I had. One of my good friends had a bridal shower today in a town a couple hours south of where we live. John's parents also live in that area so we made a trip out of it. Well, we ended up getting a flat tire on the way. We had to take the car to the nearest Wal-Mart to get two new tires, and the bad part about it was that we had the dog and the cat with us. So, we had to stand outside of Walmart with the dog while they took an hour and a half to put the tires on. -_-' To make matters worse, John's parents' internet connection was down. So of course John and I started getting withdrawal symptoms--lol. But, I had a nice time with the in-laws, and the shower was fun, so it's all good.

Anyway, please click these pics after 11pm tonight and check out my shirt! :) They changed the color scheme for the women's. It looks pretty cool. The men's color scheme is what I had intended, so I think I'll pick up both.

Tee Fury Collab and Halloween Pics

2008-10-29T08:27:00.000-05:00

Tee Fury printed their 100th shirt today, and they came up with a great way to celebrate it. They invited artists to make their own version of their bird logo.

So I looked deep into my inner self and made NERD BIRD! :D

The shirt really turned out great. They ended up getting 72 birds! People really got creative too. Tee Fury mapped it out and gave credit to all the artists. That was awesome of them. If you're catching this today (Wednesday, October 29th) check it out. www.teefury.com

To see a high res version of all the birds, check this out.
http://www.teefury.com/teefury_collab_final_flat.pdf

Last night, John and I carved our pumpkin. We found a picture of Boo from the Mario games and decided to use him. Of course we had some help from this guy:

Looks pretty cool lit up:

Do you see that black cat in the second picture? When I first bought that, I had it sitting in the foyer for a while. It freaked my dog out. Her hair stood up on her back like a mohawk and she growled at it for five minutes. I was mean and picked it up and chased her with it. Ha ha. Finally she figured out it was fake.

Tee Fury to print Betta design!

2008-10-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

I just got an email informing me that Betta will go on sale tonight on Tee Fury! Please check it out!! This will be my second print. My first was on shirt.woot a couple of months ago.

Halloween and Home Improvement

2008-10-24T16:08:00.000-05:00

I ordered my Halloween costume online, but sadly it was too small. I'm going to look like post-first-year-of-marriage Princess Peach after eating too many meatsa-balla-sandwiches with husband Mario. Anyway I had to take the zipper out, add fabric to the back and then put the zipper back. It looks bobo now. Does Peach ever wear a cape? Anyway, I told all my friends to take pics from the front.

The kitchen adventure is finally done--for the most part anyway. I still have to figure out what to do with the backsplash. Gotta price some tile. Here's what we've got so far. John also installed a new faucet.

Before

After

Before

After

Anyway, please check out my new Woot entries. Oh! That reminds me I got my first Bag of Crap yesterday. I'm so happy.

InfiniTEES Now Open!

2008-10-19T22:57:00.001-05:00

I've finally put together a tee shirt store. I decided to go with Spreadshirt since I got a lot of recommendations for it. Please check it out! You might see some designs that you liked a while back, but couldn't get them at the time. :)

InfiniTEES

Tee Fury Forecast and Other News

2008-10-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

I found out that one of my designs will be featured on Tee Fury soon! Be on the lookout!

I think I'm skipping out on the Derby this week. It's the first time I've not been interested in a theme since I started. I was almost not interested in the Old West Derby, but I'm glad I came to my senses on that one. ;)

As far as my home improvement is going, I ended up loathing the blue that we painted the walls, so I chickened out and repainted it light beige. I figure I can add color with bright accessories. We still have to paint one more coat. -_-'

Three Day Weekend of Home Improvement

2008-10-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

I know this is an art blog, but I have to post about my latest adventures in upgrading my kitchen. My husband John told me I could give my kitchen a face lift for my b-day. That sounded great to me, because ever since we moved into our house last December we had to put up with some 90's color schemes. The kitchen was dark green with white trim, white cabinets and white counters. I guess they were really into high contrast. :-/ --Oh yeah and gold handles. Anyway we didn't like it. After thinking forever about it, I finally decided to model my kitchen after this lovely $3 dish towel I found at Kmart. I know that doesn't sound like much of an inspiration piece, but I really do love it. It's aqua blue with lemons on it. Those that know me from the derbies now know I have a citrus fettish. I wasn't kidding. The theme of my new kitchen is citrus. :)

Yesterday we replaced all of the nasty gold cabinet hardware with pretty brushed nickel. We had to be on our best behavior with this guy around:

Today we put two coats of primer to cover up that green. We probably would have gotten more done, but John has been sick. We're both off tomorrow, so I think that should give us enough time to put two coats of aqua on it. Anyway, just felt like sharing. I'll try to put some before/after shots up here when we're done. C-ya!

So yesterday was my birthday

2008-10-10T22:09:00.001-05:00

I was torn. Yesterday was Thursday--new derby theme day--the day that I lock myself up in my office and draw until midnight even though I have to get up at 5:30am for work the next day. However, yesterday was also my birthday and I wanted to go out to eat with my friends too. So I did and had a fabulous time. Well, even though I got home at 9 pm I still insisted on trying to design something. I spent three hours working on it just to realize I didn't like it. That's such a terrible feeling. But it gets worse. Today I decided to tweak it and submit it when I get home from work. However, two people submit entries that are similar to it. Oh well. I was able to do a different one and I'm pretty happy with it so I guess it's all good. Click on the pic to the left to vote if you like.

Derby #63 Art as Text

2008-10-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

Here are my new entries. These were a lot of fun. Please click over on the left to vote.

Halloween Submission to DBH

2008-09-30T16:07:00.000-05:00

I've made my first sub to Design By Humans. I originally intended this for a Shirt.Woot Daily, but that kind of fell through. I thought the Halloween Contest at DBH sounded fun, so I decided to sub it there. What's weird about this one is that when I was designing it, I made the mistake of picturing it as an art composition instead of something on a tee shirt. I was completely done with it--layers cleaned up and everything by the time I tried it out on a shirt template. Rookie mistake. If I centered it, and if girls' wore it, it would look like they had glowing boobages. Thankfully, DBH allows more options for placement. Putting it off center improved the look of it tremendously. So, please take a look and consider voting!

Also in the news, "Inspired by Purple Rain" received an Honorable Mention. So far I will have three designs in the upcoming Do-Over Derby. And last but not least, yesterday two different tee shirt companies told me they were interested in a couple of my designs. Hopefully I'll be able to post of some more prints in the near future. :)

New Derby Entries and Other News

2008-09-26T08:36:00.000-05:00

Well, Purple Rain ended up finishing in 5th. I was pleased with how many votes it ended up with though. Here's to hoping for an honorable mention.

The new theme is Panic. I among others were a little surprised by this one since it's so much like the Emergency theme which wasn't that long ago. Oh well, at least I feel like I've improved a little since Emergency. Here are my two ideas:

Look Out Behind You!

After drawing the boy, I realized I've been watching too much of the anime, Gurren Lagann, because that little guy reminds me of Simon. Ha ha! Good show, btw.

The Kois' Demise

What? No, I love koi fish. In fact, I've been wanting to do a design with koi fish for awhile now. It's just that EVERYONE has beat me to it!! ;-)

Anyway, I've also recently submitted a design for a Woot Daily. Hopefully, I'll be hearing from them soon. This is the first time I've tried, so I don't know how long they usually take to say yay or nay. It's sort of "Halloweenish" so they might respond quickly.

New Blog!

2008-09-22T15:55:00.000-05:00

After a lot of procrastination, I finally got a little space here for my artwork. Eventually, I'll have an actual website, but this will be good for now.

In regards to current news, I have a design up for voting at shirt.woot called "Inspired by Purple Rain." It was in the fog for a while, but as of now it's slipped out. Please help me get it back in by clicking on the pic to the left and voting. :)

I've recently made a first submission to Threadless. I was pretty happy with the score. I was shooting for 2.5, so at least I made my goal.

I'm considering starting a Cafe Press store. I'd love any feedback I can get about this. Take a look at my portfolio over to the left, and let me know if there are any shirts on there that you think would do well there. I'm also considering submitting a couple of them to Tee Fury.

Well, I hope you like the blog, and keep in mind that it's a work in progress. I plan to update it whenever I have a new design and whenever I have exciting news. :-)