Who wants to buy me a drying rack for Christmas?

(If you're still hoping to be at all surprised by what you get for Christmas, I highly suggest putting your hands over your eyes right about now)

About the drying rack- I kid, I'm building one out of cardboard and chewing gum. No one run out and buy me anything like this. Or this.

Being in full giftmas production mode has made the garage a leetle ridiculous. I worked in glorious technicolor all day, and I got great shades on some of the prints. Some less so (see the yellow orange misregistered one), but I'm overall happy with the results.

I particularly like this one And there are fewer imperfections than usual on it!

I'm increasingly strapped for time, leaving tomorrow morning and all, so I'm probably just going to hunt down some bleach and a toothbrush when I get to the East Coast to clean these up. And bring my makeshift tear down bar (metal ruler) and some erasers for backup. And hope I can find a big enough table to work on at home. AND find something huge to weight them down, because I decided to transport everything rolled up in my magical art tube.

I do love seeing all my work spread across the floor, though, especially with all the colors. It's like a morbid rainbow!

Fisheh Shirt

Screenprinting in cold weather SUCKS. Half the fun of screenprinting is getting to splash around lots of water when I clean out my screens. It becomes the exact opposite of fun when I'm working with cold, congealed inks that clog up my screen and take twice as long to wash out using cold water. Luckily, Michael left their coffee maker for heating liver of sulfur in the garage, so I've been heating water that way, but it still bites (and continues to take twice the time).

So the very self-motivated reason I finally got around to slapping that fish on a shirt was because I couldn't find anything to go with my new black pants when I was getting dressed this morning. That new Ryonet ink Chriset gave me is REALLY thick, so I thinned it down with silkscreening medium first and it flowed a lot better. I need to get fuckloads of medium if I'm going to keep using it, though.

Here's the newsprint test run I did last night in a fit of creative frustration (I haven't screenprinted anything in weeks because it's COLD and I'm a WIMP and I work in the studio all the time now anyways). I kind of like the halo of what I assume to be oil seeping into the newsprint, so I think I'll print a series on more absorbent paper and experiment with some color elements to make the fish more interesting. I'm really proud of this design because it's the first thing resembling concrete digital design work I've screenprinted and that is kind of cool.

I'm going to throw this on because it'll be done drying by the time I finish writing and get my ass to the metal studio, where I should have been hours ago instead of reading Amanda Fucking Palmer's blog. My performance and art brains always fight on Thursdays when the studio opens late and I run circus open studio at night.

Fisheh and business update!

I feel inadequate posting without some sort of pictoral image included, and since I don't have shots of my metal creation from today (a sort of copper monocle/spyglass eye piece), you get the fisheh I'm working to make into my next shirt design. I'm doing a lot with animal skeleton imagery right now, one because it's almost Hallowe'en, and two because it SELLS (see previous post, re DELICIOUS MONEY.)

I got a mixed bag in terms of printing jobs today- a client dropped off two shirts for me to do for her this morning, and I fucked up the second one (never put the screen back down after printing! Bad!). Luckily, I have a similar shirt in stock I can offer her, but I'm kicking myself for such a simple mess-up. I'd go out a buy an exact replacement but- with my Friend and Local Non-profit Discount- that'd run me exactly what I charged her for the job.

But in AWESOME news, I went over to Chriset's house today to talk about printing labels for her handmade bags, and she traded me SIX quarts of Ryonet Textile Ink for the job. White! Jet Black! Scarlet Red! Lemon Yellow! Royal Blue! Chriset volunteers at the Oly Free Store, where she scored the ink, and I asked her to keep her eyes out for any screens that wander in. I LOVE the free store.

In other awesome news, I ran into Kimya Dawson at Chriset's house, and we got to talking about how she wants to learn how to use some screenprinting equipment she bought. I gave her my contact info and told her I'd give her any of my excess photo emulsion chemicals- christ, it's the least I can offer her for that straight month I spent with her music in my ears music non-stop.

Final thought- I NEED MORE SCREENS POSTHASTE. Jesus. I either need to make more DIY ones myself, or start scouring Craigslist and Ebay for used cheap ones. TOO MUCH ART FOR MY SIX MEASLY SCREENS TO HANDLE.

Fishehes, parts two and three

The second part of making my fish screen, coming up with the next layer. I was thinking in terms of bubbles, and came up with a cityscape silhouette. If you look closely, and share my linguistic geekery, you'll see where I hid the cyrillic letters for fish in the buildings.

And because I was a failure at posting yesterday, here's the transparency I drew from my original ink sketch (photographing plastic- less than easy). I also burned the screen today, although the emulsion didn't harden quite enough and I wound up with a little haze trying to wash out. I made a new drying area (cardboard box with a fan propped up) but I only left it for an hour or so which I think was the problem. If I was anything less than supremely lazy, I'd walk the ten feet to my garage and throw a picture of it up, but as it is y'all can see it tomorrow when I pull the first prints.

I get a lot out of serigraphy, but every time I burn a screen I feel like there's so much more I could be doing design wise. I haven't put any of my screens to fabric yet because I don't feel like they're good enough. Luckily my technical skills are improving every time I pull together a print, and with luck by the time my designs are satisfying I'll have the ability to print them tightly.

Fisheh!

Serigraphy concept art o' the day. I'm thinking 3 layers for this one (ambitious after having only pulled one single layer print thus far, I know) to get the shading just right. It also needs something stylized to represent its environment, I'm thinking about throwing a circle around it and calling it a bubble to match the ones coming out of it's mouth.

Shit, do I love me some fishies.

Koi-maid

Ah, you lucky bastards, as I have a sudden inexplicable free half hour before I depart on adventures, I'm throwing this one up as my piece today.

I don't know how much art I can make it a day- I DO know that after a certain point my creative juices get sapped and trying to force stuff out of my hands is just pointless. I did this one the same day as the first mermaid piece, and I had a really good concept and color scheme in mind, but it just didn't work as well as it should've. Ah well.

I have such a hard on for drawing koi, I have no idea why it took me this long to think up a koi-person. Definitely a concept I'm going to keep playing with.