Ghost Anchor Tshirt

Well true believers, I have decided to post again since I made a new tshirt for my shop. This design is kind of personal. It is based off of an old bookend that was given to my father by my mother. My father was in the Navy during Vietnam, and when my parents first got together, my mother gave it to my dad as a gift. I now own this, and it inspired me to create a drawing based on the piece. I guess it reminds me of my parents, and an anchor remains stable in turbulent waters. I guess its a life lesson of sorts. I am actually going to get this drawing as a tattoo ( my first) in the near future.


I originally made this as a linocut print(the big one near the header of my blog) on handmade paper which I have for sale in my other etsy shop: onitisfineart. I took it a step further and thought the old school nautical image would make a cool tshirt. I redrew the image in pencil and used my trusty Faber Castell Ink Brush Pen to finish it. So now it is a nifty new tshirt in my Etsy shop.

My Cock Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student

Ok... so here is my first real post on this thing. I have completed a new tshirt for my etsy shop, and I thought it might be cool to show the process etc. I got the idea for this shirt one time when I was stuck in traffic behind a bad driver, and I was forced to see their honor student bumper stickers. I mean great thats wonderful; but Long Island is filled with proud parents who can't drive. So I had an epiphany, and this shirt is the result.

All my artwork is done by hand, one at a time. I started with a pencil sketch on vellum which I inked with a Faber Castell Brush Pen. I love these pens, they are filled with India Ink, and really are like using a brush.

Next I scanned my drawing into the computer and I used Adobe Illustrator to add some text to my image. I didn't take pictures at this stage 'cause well.. I forgot. After viewing many fonts I settled on one called Rosewood. It has a cool 19thcentury vibe to it, and I think it worked well with the illustration. I then printed my drawing out onto a transparent sheet of plastic. I placed this transparency backwards over my silkscreen to be developed.

The image was burned onto the screen after 12 min and 30 seconds. I use a 500watt halogen light, suspended on 2 broomsticks, on 2 chairs. on each broom stick I use 12 DVD cases as support...6 under each broom stick. After exposure, I rinse my screen clean with cold water in the shower or a garden hose if I am at my friends studio. I also use an old house painting brush to wash and lightly scrub away any particles that would clog the design.

I let the screen dry and then used my heat gun to wick away any extra moisture. I have a one color screen printing press that I set up at my buddy's studio but I was stoked to print today so I rigged up some ghetto fabulous methods to print. I basically took my shirt and put an 18x24 picture frame inside of it. I taped newspaper to the one side of the frame so the ink doesn't screw it up. So yeah its a decent support for the shirt. The inside edge of the frame even provides a support for your screen to rest on when lining things up. I didnt have my squeegee either, so I used a linoleum block that I would normally carve out. I used it as my mock squeegee.


I chose yellow because I haven't printed with it yet and I thought it would look neat against the brown shirt. My print has kind of a vintage distressed look to it which I like. I think I will print this with white ink on black tshirts, and also gray shirts with black ink. Check out my etsy store OddmanOutPress, I can do all kinds of custom stuff. Well thats it for todays blog

first post

Welcome. This is my first attempt at a blog and really joining the 21st century. In the coming days I will try to document things that might be interesting to any readers out there. You will see artistic, and culinary processes in motion; and hopefully some landscape and fish photography. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?