I’ve been practicing making repeat patterns by warping digital line work I make. Often I create textures from my photography and I just want different techniques in my wheel house. I dig the color combos on this design and just how the lines draw my eye in different directions in sort of a casual manner. To me it’s sort of retro and future-y at the same time.

June 18th 2024

I’ve posted a lot of designs just to my Instagram stories and it’s time to change it up. For a while I’ve realized that I should post on my own website first, then socials. What usually happens is that I’m in a hurry and I’ll set the poster to hit IG and forget to post to my blog. With AI scrapping going on it reminds me to invest in my own blog before sharing to socials. I really enjoy my fashion design sketches and I think it’s time to treat them better.

I spent some of this Sunday generating different kinds of Labels that I could attach to my clothing. Recently I was at a market and an artist showed me a label from a brand from Mexico. The label was an illustration of a whole scene playing out between two characters. That inside label let me know that there is a whole world of possibilities open to adding narrative to pieces and using details to make things more interesting. These designs are not in the lane of narrative labels, but I wanted to practice some more of the standard of label design generation.

Recently I found out about ai training on social media, so I’ll be posting more to my blog more

I’ll be posting more to my blog. I’ve finished the second edition of the zines and by Thursday of next week I will have sent them all out. Even though the design work of the zine was all finished, it took time to acquire all the resources to finish the project. It feels good to complete projects. I feel like it gives that extra energy to move forward and finish more.

June, 7, 2024

Just some clips from this weeks drawing night

I made the screens with the plastic and flexible frames.

The first round worked, this round, the second round didn’t expose at all.

Ideally the process would be a wash out I n a bucket or shower to clear the screen.

-removable of screen could be better. Maybe stapling a mesh to a wooden frame. Exposing, cutting out the mesh. Then attaching to a new frame of different material.

Materials?

Could you construct larger images with pieces together torn out screens?

I buy art supplies often and now I’m attempting to learn the tools. I know just a few simple tools can make great work, but I also like to try stuff out. Right now I’m working on learning this brush pen and these water colors. Limiting my palate with colors has me focus more on light and shadows, how I can blend to get more range. The brush pen is all about flow, and seeing what I can accomplish with just one tool. I just try to keep it all in my bag, so I can work on it regularly.

I enjoy making pieces like this in my sketchbook. I notice there are better design choices I could have made, but that came through in hindsight. Manila those choices have to do with lettering. Sometimes these pieces don’t do well, but I. Enjoy making them. I love creating narratives.

Just exploring design with this piece and seeing if I can take it further. I notice it can be more

02.03.24 - yesterday I was attempting to make some flexible diy silk screens and they all came out bad. Unusable. I had another screen ready and I burnt the fronts for these CMYK shirts. I picked up a course on how to make a collection and it’s presented some interesting ideas. The three collages that I’ve turned into CMYK prints all orbit around a theme. The journey, the path, using your gift to interact with and experience the world.

I realize to get better at clothing I’d like to learn how to make better graphic tees. I can focus on art and translate the ideas of my work to tees and remix them. I’d like to have a season where I just focus on making a lot of Loose one off tees. Then I can start bringing things together for collections. Doing small collections of five pieces.

These first three CMYK shirts are going to be an exploration of how to make better and easier. Developing a system or a grip of systems.

I’ve been doing CMYK prints on t-shirts the past couple of months. I like how they’ve been coming out. I notice that just putting the art on the shirt doesn’t make it a good shirt. The shift from collage to t-shirt require a shift in perspective because the context is different. Design skills come into play more. Sometimes I struggle with the balance. Often I work things out while I’m making something. With printing with making clothes it’s all in the planning. Most times you work it all out before production starts.

The idea of a few simple tools comes from the Julia Cameron book, “The Artists Way”.

The phrase is an affirmation that says “With a few simple Tools my creativity will flourish”. In the original collage I tied this idea to pro skateboarding. I think it’s dope how skateboarding can take someone across the world. I think once anyone finds something they enjoy or their gift it can take them to beneficial spaces.

When I’m at work, I can listen to things. I’ve spent a good amount of time listening to older print process breakdowns and illustrators breaking down comics. I enjoy learning about printmaking and for my own practice illustration and drawing hold more weight now. Being able to put the idea in the sketchbook and translate the idea into different mediums is something I’m working on. Listing to how comic makers from back in the day use to build up their drawing from pencils to ink has me think in layers. Just like printing, just like painting you can build upon things in phases. The old school way newspapers in comics use to print is coming back in some people’s work. As a printmaker and multi-media artist I’m going to use some of theses techniques to my advantage. It starts with practicing some of the fundamentals.

I’ve wanted to combine my drawing and photography for a minute. I’ve tried it in the past and for me I think it’ll just be a matter of repetition. I got an older iPad now so it’s easy to combine my photos with drawings from my sketchbook. I’ve wanted to emulate Jamie Hewlett in his ability to mix drawing and photograph, but I have to take my own approach.

I been figuring out different uses for the thermal printer. With these new strategies maybe it’ll help do different color ways in a analogue approach

I’ve been wanting to translate a few of my collages into t-shirts for a long time. In the past two months I just sat down and learned how to do color separations in photoshop. Using that with bitmapping I was able to translate the image into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black screens to print the image.

Sometimes Less is more. I notice this week or the past few weeks things have been chaotic. I’ve been working on this small series of three related to the idea of fine dinning and food. Often I’ve used the metaphor of being a chef or cooking in relationship to being creative and generating art. This image is a mixture of Lino carving and digital collage (photoshop) which I turned into a screen print. I printed on fabric and singed the edges.

The piece is definitely inspired by a famous chef and I wanted to make a piece for myself that makes me think of being of Service creatively. I think that occupies a specific space where I can pursue my interests and creative integrity and you know make shit for others too. What do I wanna cook? What would I serve myself and how can I be of service. Where can I create Value?

I was trying to be extra and do all this shit, but sometimes you just gotta do what’s right for the context. Meet the goals.

I’m going to keep developing the other pieces and this one is done. I think I got some of the energy that goes into the kitchen and some of the energy you use to move the kitchen forward.