Five Leaf Clover Logo

Hey, world! It's been awhile. I've been remarkably happy and well adjusted and BUSY living here in Portland, which means I haven't been putting time and energy into making art. But don't worry, the crushing depression of winter in the Pacific Northwest is on the verge of hitting, so I'll no doubt be productive for the coming months of emotional hell.

 Last night, my dear friend Claire rolled into town to vend at Orycon. She sells ridiculously adorable geeky accessories and runs an etsy shop as Five Leaf Clover. She's been looking for a logo/character to represent all the badass things she sells, and asked me to come up with something that encompasses steampunk, Star Trek, Star Wars, circus, video games, furries, and general geekitude, plus a five leaf clover. While she was doing some last minute jewelry assembly for the con, I drew up, inked and colored the above. I think it looks pretty damn fitting, if I do say so myself.

These were my original sketches. The initial concept she gave me was "chibi", which is a little far out of my normal drawing style, as the creepy big-eyes creatures above can attest. Fortunately, she then gave me Chainsaw Girl as a style reference, which was MUCH easier for me to replicate.

Mapping out a pose for the figure and labeling all the elements we wanted to include. (I made a few lists to make sure we got them all!)

First rough of the figure- too big, and too sweet for the look I wanted. As you can see, I replaced the lists of elements with "ALL THE THINGS."

And the final piece! From the top down, we have fox style kitty ears, feather earrings, a black choker, steampunk jacket, a Starship Enterprise pin, dog tags, arm warmers, a pocket belt, a Nintendo game belt buckle, a five leaf clover patch, vertical striped tights, a steampunk blaster in a thigh holster and furry boots. And a light sabre. All of which Claire can be seen wearing or selling at any given moment.

I'm going to do a lot of clean up in Gimp to get rid of the extraneous pencil lines and hopefully punch up the color. I wanted the image to be detailed enough that it could be blown up and have interesting complexity or shrunk and still be readable.

If you haven't already, go check out Claire's etsy shop Five Leaf Clover and go buy things!

Trio 'o Shirts

I pulled these three shirts while yelling along with Amanda Fucking Palmer in the garage today. It's a Christmas commission for an etsy client, who specified the metallic fade ink and the designs. The photography is a little quick 'n dirty, but she loved the shirts.

I love how the ink faded out because of the placement of the skull. I was going to get brave and test my new 16" squeegee on this, but I chickened out and used my old 6" one instead.

This is the top half of the modified mannequin Michael made (say that 3 times fast) who occasionally models shirts for me. I never caught her name while Michael was around, but I've been called her Simone in my head. Her bottom half is white plaster over gold paint- any suggestions? Michael? Name your creation?

Dream of Trees

Screenprinting has been driving me crazy lately. Strike that- the incredibly bleak weather in the Pacific Northwest has been driving me crazy lately. But 3 weeks of it being too cold or wet to work in my garage studio hasn't been helping.

Paid commissions don't care what my levels of mental capacity are from day to day, of course. I've got two big jobs ("big" here is on a level corresponding to my one-person studio operations- three big jobs will pay my rent for a month) that I wanted to get done during my week off. I prepped, burned, and cursed out two screens for washing out COMPLETELY before I realized that all my fucking emulsion was expired.

There's nowhere to buy emulsion where I am, of course. I can drive an hour to Seattle and get shitty Speedball crap-in-a-can, or I can buy a new gallon online and wait two weeks- neither of which is an option for two jobs that need to be done by Friday.

The third option (according to the internet) is to overexpose my screens. I still have unpleasant memories of overexposing my first screens, but the internet apparently thinks that this is a wonderful idea. I have two freshly emulsed screens in my drying rack right now waiting to try this tomorrow, and if it doesn't work we're going to have to get REALLY creative.

Other things I've been waiting for with increasing frustration: American Apparel to stop making me jump through hoops to wholesale their clothes. I want to buy their stuff, I want to buy it cheaply, I want to put my shit on it and sell it. You'd think they'd want this too, but I'm in the middle of filling out my third resellers sales ID tax form for them this week.

Up top is a piece I forced myself to translated onto acetate because I haven't liked anything I've been able to make come out of my pencil in weeks. Below is the version I'm going to try to burn.

Someday I'll draw something that I actually want to see on a shirt. Someday.

I can has free market economy?

I admit it- I've been spending inordinate amounts of time working on screenprinting and typography jobs for clients and equally ridiculous amounts of time inventing new ways to take people's money in exchange for my art. Tweaking designs in Gimp. Prepping screens. Haggling to get the best price for my time and artistic energy. Giving discounts to friends and non-profits GOUGING EVERYONE WHO COMES WITHIN REACH OF MY GREEDY MAELSTROM OF SWEET SWEET EXCHANGE OF MY TIME AND ENERGY FOR THEIR COLD HARD CASH OH YES YES YES GIVE IT TO ME BABY.

Ahem.

So before anyone accuses me of creating art for my own sick capitalist gain, I would like to say- yes. God yes. I hereby brand myself before anyone else gets around to it. Dibs!

But yes, I've been doing all commissioned work lately and I loooove it. Nothing I can make public right now, but I'm starting to get more comfortable with Gimp and Photoshop for cleaning up logos and mocking up designs for folks. Most of the jobs have been for friends or local nonprofits, and those that haven't I've been able to pull out my shameless street performer mojo to make sure people know exactly how much my work is worth.

Here's to the system!


(If you couldn't tell, btw, my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek under that radical queer Bash Back! bandanna. Just so ya know.)

More Stuff I Do In My Garage

I made thirty patches for the Oly Seed Exchange. Thirty! And I did it without washing the screen out in between each one, which shows that something Judy taught me about flooding a screen actually stuck. I still wouldn't do a mass run for something like individual shirts, but I'm pretty proud of my consistency here, and I only sacrificed five patches to the aggrieved printing gods.

Other shit that makes my life as an amateur garage studio screenprinter easier- wiping ink out of a screen with a sponge as opposed to the Hose of Doom. I can't believe it took me this long to realize how much less time I would have to spend on drying my screens if I did that.

Tomorrow I have another marathon session in the school studio to wrap up my hella cute linocut card (which is just a bit sappy thanks to how I've been feeling lately), then I'm skedaddling over to the Oly Seeds Benefit with the fruits of my inky labors. Oly folks- COME OUT TO THIS, THERE WILL BE PIZZA.

Thank you.