SWEET! So, I just ran another quick test with my discharge paste, attempting to work out a way for me to be able to print waterbased inks onto dark fabric. Waterbased ink is quite thin, and even the best stuff isn't opaque when printed on a dark substrate, so to print on dark fabrics you've generally got two options: 1) print, dry, print, dry, print, dry ad nauseum until it's opaque, or 2) print a layer or two of white ink down, dry it, then print your color on top of it. This second method is actually quite adequate, but takes time, and leaves you with a heavy print.

What discharge agents let you do is basically bleach the color out of your substrate, so when you print your color on top of it, it's as though you're printing on a much lighter shirt.

And as you can see by these samples, HOLY CRAP! It worked out even better than I could have hoped. I tested out white, process yellow, and red ink, printed over a layer of discharge base. The colors are BRIGHT, vivid, and look more like they've been burned into the shirt than printed heavily on top of it.


So this is pretty exciting. My only concern is that when I wash them, as the discharge paste washes out, it may take the ink sitting on top of it with it, but we'll see, I'm going to toss these samples in the wash later today or tomorrow.

Also, I think tomorrow at work I'll ask my boss if I can take home a little bit of discharge powder that can be mixed directly into my inks, and try that. Using that would save me the extra step of printing the base down, and make printing on dark shirts every bit as easy as printing on light ones :)

w00t!
-P.

PS - ah crap, I still haven't posted about that show I did last weekend. Aight, I'll get to that later.

Hey there folks!

So remember back this spring, my roommate was doing a fundraiser walk for Crohn's Disease, and I thought it'd be hillarious if she named her team, "Rectum!? Damn Near Killed 'Em!" She didn't want to at first, but I had just built my press, and I finally convinced her to adopt the name by telling her that if she did, I'd design and print her team shirts.

Well, I still wear mine around all the time, and it gets a lot of great looks. Some people kinda stare at it with confusion (I guess the expression, "wrecked him? damn near killed him!" isn't as common as I thought it was), some give it a shy smile (they get it, but think they shouldn't be laughing at something dirty), but most people downright love it. So, I decided that I would print a new batch to try and sell, and I'm happy to say they're finally ready and available!

They came out great, and printing went a lot more smoothly this time, heh. I've got S, M, L, XL and XXL available. Aaaaaand, while I had the screens burned, I decided to go ahead and knock out a handful of posters, too! The posters look great, too, and printing them was a breeze.

So hey, spread the word about these, show the etsy listing to your friends!

Cheers yall! More stuff always in the works!
-P.

What's up folks! Got some new stuff to show you. Plush toys!!! My everencouraging (I declare that to be a word) LadyFriend™ encouraged me to combine my screenprinting and my sewing and make up some cute plush toys, so I figured what the hell and gave it a shot! You might remember these two little fellows from the shirt I made for my cousin's kid a few months ago. It's a modified version of him, and who knows, if he proves popular I may make additional permutations of him in the future. He's easy to edit, and small enough I can make films of him at home.



And, so then, there's this guy, heh. He actually comes from a nightmare I had at my girlfriend's place one night: (I was on a camping trip with my brother and dad in the Linville Gorge area. We were contemplating our campsite when we heard a rustling behind us and turned to see the shape of a very large bird forming out of leaves and other detritus from the ground, swooping by the tree line. There was a crack like thunder and the form of the bird dissapated, and something fell, spinning, out of it. The spinning object slowed and hovered a few feet from the ground. It was a koala, a very ANGRY koala, with antlers, holding a scimitar. That's when I woke up shouting.) Erm, right, so anyway. I told Hana about the dream in the morning, and she laughed at my ridiculousness and insisted that I draw the koala nature god for her, but that he must be cute. Heh, so I drew him up, screenprinted him and surprised her with a koala-nature-demigod plushie for her birthday :)

These have really been incredibly fun to make, and I've learned a SHIT ton about sewing in the process. I'll definitely be making more of this kind of thing, as well as other soft sculpture things in the future. Heh, I sort of have a vision of getting a wicker basket, making a model guillotine out of cardboard and filling the basket with plushie severed heads. I think that'd be fuckin rad.

Anyway, while they may not always get along, these fine stuffed, printed gentlemen are available for sale, individually, through my Etsy Store :)

More soon!
-P.

Heh, haven't seen one of those from me in a while!

So dig this. Someone at work (I think it may have been Bossman himself), described his job as like having a bunch of little baby birds cheeping at him all day. My buddy at work Jeff thought that was pretty funny and decided to illustrate it.

I'd been wanting to experiment with plushie thingies for a while now, so I came up with the idea of making a little plush thing out of it.

So I got Jeff to scan it in and do color separations for it, and I printed it up on some old soft white jersey cotton, I made a back for it, and tonight I sewed it up, stuffed it, and sewed the corner shut!

It's super cool and was WAY fun to do. The craftsmanship is CRAP (except for the printing, which is pretty spot on), hehehe. It's misshapen and lumpy as fuck. My sewing, it needs work, and I need to learn to stuff these things and not have them be full of lumps.

Now, to sew the thing closed, and not have a big, obvious spot where it was sewn shut, I had to learn how to do an "invisible" or "ladder" stitch. Now, I'd looked around for a good tutorial on how to do this for a while now, but couldn't find one. In fact, the ones I found were impressively shitty. But then I found this one, and all was well with the world. It really laid it all out, cearly and comprehensibly.

So lemme know your thoughts, cuz I definitely see a lot more of this on the horizon! And check out the flickr page for more photos of the cushion!

-P.

So, here's the design I finally ended up going with. Many thanks to those of you who gave me feedback and comments. It was really genuinely helpful. I still feel like the design was a little too rushed, and the drawing is kinda crappy. But ultimately that's my fault for putting it off as long as I did. The shirts came out really well, though :)

Printing them was a bit of an adventure. Printing with waterbased ink without retarder SUCKS. Printing waterbased ink without a heatgun or flash dryer SUCKS. I really need one or the other, preferably both, ASAP. In the end I was only able to get about six printed before I had to clean out the screens and start again. My boss has been really helpful and supportive though. He gave me a catalyst to mix into my inks which helps them stay in the shirt since I don't have a proper dryer, and he just tonight gave me a chemical I can mix in that--while not strictly a retarder--should serve the same function. I'll hopefully try it out later this week.

But I have to say, the registration is PERFECT! Absolutely spot-on. I couldn't have asked for better results from my little press :)

If anyone is interested, I've been uploading pictures of my various printing projects to my Flickr account, and I just uploaded a couple videos of my press to YouTube.




I know that I haven't spent much time on LJ lately, and I do miss it. I've not been keeping yall abreast of my projects, and I'm hopelessly behind on my f-list. But the simplest way I can put it is that things are good, things are busy (crazy busy almost!) but the things going on are exciting and positive.

I hope yall are well!
-P.

So dig me, a week or two ago, I got an email saying that Laurence (the lead guy of the band who played at the Arts Market back in December) was organizing a regular art event at Salvador Deli (a fucking FANTASTIC sandwich and beer shop) in NoDa for first fridays, and it was kicking off this weekend. So I called him and reserved a spot. Basically, 12+ local artists crammed themselves into the parking lot and patio at Salvador Deli hawking our delightful wares whilst a couple local bands played on stage. It was a great fucking time!

Heh, and apparently, I was on Fox News (local) friday night, hahhaah. As we were setting up Friday afternoon, two young guys, one with a camera, one with a mic, came into the patio and started talking to people. They were trying to do a story for the news that night about how social networking sites affect businesses. So I got interviewed about that and about whether I thought they were a distraction at work. I don't have internet access all day at work, so it's kind of a non-issue for me, but I tried to get across that sure they're a distraction, but so is ANY website.

Gotta tell ya I feel a little dirty being on fox news, ha.

And, at some point during the night, a guy named Brennan came up to me and asked if I wanted to come back out for an event they were throwing there saturday night and set up again. I was pretty socially exhausted but decided to do it. So, saturday I drove back down and set up again. It was a different crowd, but still a lot of fun people to hang out with, and I sold some stuff too, so score :) There was live hoola hooping too!

I'm finding that I really like the 'art festival' context for displaying my art. I dunno, there's no pretense, trying to make things seem fancier than they are. Everyone's there, relaxed, having some beers and having a good time. It just feels right for what I guess I'm trying to do. Props to Jen H, Chris, Katja and Ben, Laurence, Swink, DAG, Stuart (of Salvador Deli) and everybody else involved! Thanks Chris, Becca, Rachel, Devin, Boyd and Billy for coming out!


In related news, I almost ran out of business cards Friday night, and figured I didn't have enough for saturday. I tried to get geared up to print a new batch saturday, but setup time was at 5 and I just didn't have enough time. But I didn't want to be the jackass with no business cards, so what did I do? I made a rubber stamp business card. Hahaha!

"Rubber Stamps™! When you absolutely GOT to have a business card in no time flat!" Hot. Hand Printed. HAMazing. Hehehe, this makes me chuckle. I probably drew and carved the whole thing in under an hour. It was super rushed and not as nice looking as it could have been. Maybe I'll do a nicer linocut version at some point, scan and screenprint a batch of 1-color cards from it.

-P.

And I haven't even gotten around to writing about how awesome my girlfriend is, sheesh, tons to post about!

So, about a month ago, I signed up for a meme committing me to make something for the first six people who signed up. I ended up doing a little more than that, but it's ok. These are the results.


First up, for Jenn pac, a new headband, since her manfriend Richard vomitsaw stole the last one I made for her. This one's a little more fancy than that though; I took the opportunity to redraw her horns, and add a decorative stitched border around the front. Er... and ignore that huge spot in the hem where I clearly fucked up, lol. Modelled by my roommate Jen.





Next up, iPod cases for four lovely people: Ali mckenzee, Josh joshtothemax, Laura alethalruby, and Aubrey spookyelectric1. Note the custom hand-screenprinted designs on Josh and Aubrey's ;) Fun stuff :) And, I fixed the tops on Josh and Laura's so they don't look quite so fucking bobo now.



For Lisa mishmashed, who requested not an iPod case, but a woodcut, I made this, heh. I haven't had a chance to print it yet, but I should be doing that one night this week. Once it's printed, I'll watercolor it or tea paint it. The image is flipped, so you can read the text. This was a hell of a lot of fun to make actually. I haven't worked much with wood, and when I have it's always been a nightmare. But I carved pretty much all this in the "proper" way, using a single blade and carving out each line individually, rather than just using U and V gouges like I would with linoleum.






And, for my friend Tim, I drew up this pretty wicked skull and screenprinted it to some purple fabric and sewed up him up a case. I've gotten a lot better at making these. In the end, it turns out that while machine sewing is fine for the inner and outer linings, to stitch the top in place, I pretty much have to hand-sew it if I want good results. I discovered this doing Aubrey's, which was too small to even attempt machine sewing. I've got some more cupcakes and skulls printed to a couple different fabrics. I may sew up some more of these and try selling them on etsy.



Anyway, gotta run to work, but wanted to share these.

Later, yall!
-P.

At last! New, from The Shallow End Press--the When You Are Squeezed shirts are NOW AVAILABLE at my Etsy store!!!

The prints came out really well--all the fine details of the original linocut printed true. The shirts are high quality Anvil raglan 3/4 length sleeve shirts, and they're printed with high quality waterbased ink, so the print is SUPER soft on the shirt; you'll never know it's there!

I hope you enjoy wearing them as much as I enjoyed making them!

-P.

All Arts Market!
Phew, gonna be tired tomorrow, but I really wanna get all this out :)

So, the art festival was December 10th, and holy crap it was AAAWWWWESOME!!! Shannon (of NoDaRioty) had the Neighborhood Theater PACKED OUT with 90+ local artists who did all kinds of different work. It was an absolute blast to get to walk around and see what kind of work my peers here in town are doing. We've got some good stuff going on!

I left my table several times and went around meeting the folks whose work I liked the best. I gave out a ton of business cards (more on that in a sec), but unfortunately, I only got like 2 or 3 in return, so I don't have a way to get in touch with most of the folks I met :( I still need to email the cute hippy chick I met who had a bunch of print work and was wanting to learn how do more. These folks were pretty friggin awesome. Oooh! And to top it off, there was a cash bar, and my favorite deli (Salvador Deli) was there selling sandwiches to boot!


The event had live music the whole time--a local band was there playing the whole time, and I actually really enjoyed it. It was pretty eclectic as there were a lot of members that sort of came and went as they pleased, so a lot of different styles were represented. They were playing a lot of funk, almost hip hop towards the end of the night. The only downside was that there were artists packed into the theater all the way up to the stage, meaning that talking to patrons was almost impossible for artists close to the stage-----like I was, hahaha. It's all good, though. It was disappointing to have that hindrance, but I really enjoyed the music, and danced right there at my booth.

I really enjoyed this particular festival and will absolutely participate the next time they do one, but I also really enjoyed the festival context in general as a way to show my work and meet people. It's something I'd like to do a lot more often :)


( A bunch more awesome stuff--Cameron and Becca helping me do business cards, and the movie party, with pics! Cut for length. )

-P.

I'm sorry ElJay, I've been neglecting you (though I'm pretty caught up on my f-list!) Let's see if I can unload some of the stuff I've been wanting to post about.

So, I made Christmas cards again this year. And, though they didn't come out much better than last year's I am sending this crop out :)

Er... shit, looking back, man, I should have sent those out, they looked AWESOME. But I digress...

So yeah, I made crimmas cards. They're screenprinted, 3-colors on the outside, 1 on the inside, and all from hand-drawn films. Now... I think they look a little busch league (though apparently in about a year I won't, lol), but they're pretty. Basically, when I had the idea, I was so stoked on it, I executed them really fast. I wanted them to look hand-drawn... but I didn't want them to look like a five year old drew them, which they do, lol. But así es la vida.

The images are "ojos de dios," or "god's eyes." I've no idea their religious significance, but I remember that as a kid, we would make them every year and hang one at the top of our christmas tree. It's part of my puerto rican heritage, and they've always reminded me of christmas time, so I thought they'd be pretty good fodder for a card.


Pretty much each one is unique; I printed them 4 at a time, and switched colors a few times each layer, so almost every one is individual.

Hope everyone has a good holiday :)

-P.

What's up, y'all?

So, dig this. There's a huge art festival going on THIS WEDNESDAY, December 10th from 6-10pm at the Neighborhood Theater in NoDa. This is a HUGE event, featuring 90 or so LOCAL artists, plus live performances by local bands, and best of all IT'S FREE!!!

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I've been so caught up in getting ready for it (and getting a badass poster ready for friday) that I'm just doing it now. I'm actually going to have a booth at this festival, along with my buddy Swink from work. It's going to be pretty badass.

Now, I understand that most of you--my charlotte friends--aren't really into art. I know this. But there's going to be a lot more at this event than just visual art. There's bound to be clothing, jewelry, wood working, and other cool handmade shit, so please, come out and support your local poor creative folks!!

THIS Wednesday, 6-10pm, Neighborhood Theater in NoDa--BE THERE!!!

-P.

So, also on Monday, Tim told me about an annual Day of the Dead art show at Pura Vida this weekend, and asked if I'd want to put anything in it. Fuck yes I would!

I'd had some other skull comps on the shelf I'd been trying to make something with for a while and decided to finish one of those. lol, and I realized, I had three days to do it.


The basic bits were done already; hand-carved rubber stamps done with oil based relief printing ink. I wanted to tea stain the whole thing (which I'd never done) so I went lookin for some tutorials. Of the ones I found, this one looked like it yielded the coolest results, and sure enough, it worked AWESOME. It wasn't quite dark enough the first time, so I gave it a second go.


I tried a couple different teas. I mostly used rooibos, because I had a bunch of it and I don't like it. It worked really well. Darjeeling on the other hand, didn't work well at all.

Going in, I figured I would put some color in with watercolor. The reality however, is that I suck at painting, and I really didn't think I'd be satisfied with the results if I did it that way. But, I suddenly realized that if tea stains paper, that tea soaked in india ink would also stain paper, in color!

So, I heated some water, poured it into containers, and squirted in some india ink. I then let some tea bags soak up the tinted water for a while. Then, I spread the tea grounds around the composition where I wanted them, and let them soak in. I let them soak a little too long, and the red bled out across more of the composition than I would have liked, but c'est la vie.



Here's the piece after I washed off the tea grounds:


And here's some closeups:



That's about it. After all that was done, I let it dry, sandwiched between some cardboard, and under some heavy weight to keep it from warping. Then I drew in the remainder of the banner with a brush and india ink, and wrote in the text with a calligraphy marker. I then took it outside and burned the edges with a cigarette lighter.

I feel like it's still kinda busch-league, but I'm satisfied with it :)

And here's me at the reception saturday night. HAHAHAHA, LOOK AT THAT STACHE, AAAHAHAHA!

They put me right above this incredibly well done sugar skull by a local tattooist, Chris Stuart. He's mad good. The top-right skull is done by my friend Tim, and I don't know who did the piece below his, but it's incredibly cool.

The show was low key, but really nice. Not a ton of artwork, but mostly quality. There were some cuban musicians performing and they were great. They played El Carretero, which was awesome :)

Anyway, enjoy! Feel free to comment!
-P.

What up, y'all. Here's the piece I'm submitting for the Day of the Dead show at Pura Vida. Had this in the works for a while. Been fiddling with it even longer. Never been fully satisfied with it. Still ain't. But, it's pretty dope, and I'll be happy to have it up on the wall :)

The base is hand carved rubber stamps, stained with tea, and then all the color is done with tea leaves soaked in india ink--I'll post some process shots in a few days when I've got some time.

Now to go work on my costume some more. Later!
-P.

So dig it, I've got some ratty, holey clothes. I work in a factory, so this isn't really a problem. But, my favorite pair of work shorts recently started developing a hole in the right leg, and I simply wasn't going to stand for that. The hole was forming as a long, horizontal tear and I thought it'd be pretty funny to make a patch for it that read "CENSORED," so, I did. (Because, as religion teaches us, the flesh is evil and must be censored.)

I measured how big I wanted the patch to be and drew out the word that size, cut it out of a piece of film with an exacto, taped it to the bottom of a screen and screenprinted myself some patches! I actually had some other goodies burned into my big screen, so I decided to make some other patches, too. I patched up a hole in my pajama pants with a censored patch as well!



I also snazzied up some headbands for mahself, too! Heh, I took some t-shirt sleeves and printed 'SHALLOW END PRESS' (actually, the text from the Green layer of my poster, still in my screen) onto them, with the image from my birthday coozies (with the '25' blocked out) below it. And on the other side, I printed the Key layer from my I Love You hand cards :) They look pretty badass.


I ♥ making shit.

Later,
-P.

Rock! So dig it, I totally just made this awesome 5-color, hand-silkscreened poster for a party I'm having from hand-drawn transparencies. And here's how it went.

I decided we were gonna watch Dead Alive at the party, and I remembered that I had done this little sketch of a skull puking in my sketchbook a year or so back. PERFECT!

( The rest! Image heavy, and a video, but SFW )


Phew, so there you go, that's how this craziness came to be. If ya got any questions, lemme know. And now, I'm going to bed. Later.
-P.

BOOM. Here it is, the poster for the party Saturday. 5-color, hand-printed silkscreen, from hand-drawn color separations. Pretty badass.

Gimme a bit to get it written up, but I'm gonna post a process thread on how I did this. Enjoy.


Guys? This is serious bizness.



Later.
-P.

Remember these two linocuts? Well, prior to this week, the first one of each I printed was the only one of each in existence. I never printed more of them, just the first proof for me. But now I've printed up more, and they are available for sale (cheap!) at my Etsy store.

Go buy 'em!

Спокойной ночи!
-P.






Heh, oh, also, I finally broke down and bought myself one of these.

Next step: Engraving or etching my own custom seal. BOO YA.

After the movie party, I realized there were still a bunch of posters left. I don't really need them. I'd love to find good homes for them. Hmmm... But then, I've still got a bunch of beer coozies left as well... But then, I've still got a stack of these I Love You cards as well...

Hmm...

*LIGHTBULB!!!*

I'm gonna offer you folks the deal of a LIFETIME!
MIX AND MATCH $5 ART!!!!

THIS IS NOT A JOKE FOLKS! (you are assured) Filthy Phil of The Shallow End Press has gone CRAZY! He's offering YOU the chance to take ANY of these lovely HAND CRAFTED items home for only $5!!!!

That's right, just $5 for any one of these impossibly awesome products! And only $2 for shipping. Now I know what you're thinking: "but Filthy Phil, only $2 for shipping? That's stupid low! Like slackjawed, mouthbreathing low!"

You think that's low? Let me sweeten this deal for you. Take YOUR CHOICE of any TWO of these items for only $10!!!! And shipping? $1. Just one green American dollar. Now, I can year you. "HUH UH, OH NO HE DIDN'T. There's just no way he can go that low on shipping!" But I DID.

Now I bet you think this crazy ass liquidation sale couldn't possibly get better. You're dead wrong. Like disco-dead wrong. That's right. For a mere $15, you can own ALL THREE OF THESE AWESOME HAND CRAFTED OBJECTS! And you know what's even better? If you buy all three, I'M GONNA SHIP YOU THOSE EFFERS FOR FREE!!!!

$5	$5	$5

You heard it here folks, Filthy Phil has gone NUTZ, and he's offering you any of these fine printed items for $5, two for $10 or three for $15, and FREE shipping on purchases of all three!

Get 'em while supplies last!



(something is deeply wrong with my brain)

Kisses,
-P.

Ladies and Gentlemen. You wanted it. You asked for it. You got it.

I give you, a brand new edition of The Shallow End.

I drew this while I was in Bama. I finished it a few hours ago.

Enjoy :)

-P.

So, I worked on this image some more this weekend. I spraypainted the ground in, and was hoping to have some critters printed on that ground, but didn't quite get that far. Maybe this weekend. See the evening version here.



But, speaking of said critters, lol, I made this. I give you THE SOUTHEASTERN TITBULL!!!

"Behold the rare and majestic southeastern TITBULL!!! This noble (perky, some might say) creature spends its days grazing (er, somehow) in the fields of the south-eastern United States. But beware, this creature has a hypnotizing effect on men, and a number of fatalities are reported each year when some hapless young man wanders into a pasture and is bludgeoned by the Titbull's razor sharp horns. It is not to be trifled with!!!"

Hahahahahaha, this thing is awesome. The sky and ground are spraypainted, the creature itself is screenprinted. I've made 6 of these so far. If you'd like one, it can be purchased (inexpensively I might add) at my Etsy store.


Also, as I've worked on the print up top, I printed my little sun dude all on its own. I've only made three of these so far, and I'm keeping one myself, so there are two available. It, too, can be purchased (inexpensively, too) at--you guessed it--my Etsy store!

One love, y'all,
-P.