August 2009 - Hieratic Hieratic

2 SHIRTZ

something nobody will understand until i explain it to them, probably:

(by ken)

close-up detail (also by ken)

i had to handpaint some of this, especially the red lettering, *with a paperclip* but don’t go thinking that’s anywhere near amazing because the truth is i was forced to since i tend to make really crappy screens. i learned many things about screenprinting through the two-quarter process of failing on this one over and over:

1) if someone is selling you a huge screen at a low price, you might as well make sure first that it’s not so huge that it can’t comfortably fit in the craft center lab, press, dryer, UV area, pressure washer sink, and/or shirt press mechanism.

2) even if by some ungodly method in which you probably sold your soul and your firstborn child to the clutches of satan you manage to actually get the screen to fit in the press, make sure that you have actually printed in such a manner that the image can be easily transferred onto the shirt in the most appropriate area. don’t, say, emulse the images bottom facing out onto the very edge of a gigantic screen because that means your choices will be either putting the image on the bottom of the shirt upside-down, or missing the shirt entirely. PLAN WHERE TO PUT YOUR IMAGES THROUGH CAREFUL MEASUREMENT AND LOGICAL THOUGHT.

3) for the love of all things good and successful in life, wash your screen after every color use if you are printing multicolor. that stuff dries fast. say you do a test print and then decide to print for real? by the time you are ready to do so the holes in the screen will be gunked up with ink and nothing will get through. and then you will cry and pitch a fit like i did because the craft center is closing and you have to take three times as long to clean out your screen since the paint is now like varnish, and you didn’t even get a shirt made out of the deal.

4) if you are not using a shirt press because you’re stupid and your screen doesn’t fit correctly into it, make sure your squeegee passes are real damn good because once you lift that screen to “check” it’s going to be nigh impossible to put it down again in the exact same spot.

5) don’t come to the craft center an hour or two before closing on the last day of the quarter if you’re making a design this complicated with a screen that doesn’t fit and an image that is printed wrong. you will not finish and you’ll annoy the staff by making them stick around longer than they intended because you are still washing your screen.

6) bring an assistant, particularly an experienced screenprinter– OR an engineer. ken was remarkably level-headed and made many helpful suggestions during the process. he also was a very good screen holder.

oh i also made this a while ago, but never put pictures up til now:

much easier to make, trust me.

close-up detail

sorry those ones are so silly and very myspace, i was desperate to get pictures of this thing because it’s my favorite shirt in the world now.

August 22, 2009 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

love in the time of depression (jan 07)

less than a month after gidget died, ken had to go visit his family. i didn’t want to be alone for the weekend, so i decided to go inflict myself upon sara and karl and fluffy, who are good enough friends that i usually feel 200 times better in their presence.

at chinese. i think this might have been my first introduction to fluffy’s fiancee.

fluffy ordered this… thing that was pretty much um. well, remember the “rocketship” cookies in death to smoochy? er, yeah. i wanted a better picture of him with it, but i think for some reason he was embarrassed to be photographed in its presence because he very quickly devoured the thing.

i swear this is like the perfect match.

we went to a playground.

some of us were more excited than others.

we are trying to be river from firefly or serenity or one of those. it looks like we are competing but really that thing was just damn hard to stand on. (by karl)