Arright, yall! I've got a pretty awesome thing to announce! I can now screenprint glossy vinyl stickers AT HOME!!! It occurred to me this was something I could probably do at home around the time I got my vacuum table, so I talked to my boss about it. He hooked me up with some samples of pro weatherproof ink and some sheets of old vinyl sticker material and I set to it.


I remembered that Jennpac had wanted to have some stickers made, and that seemed like a great place to start and test out my new gear. Well, I'm pleased to say that they came out fucking GREAT!!! Oh man, these things are awesome! (Check out her post here.) The art looks fanastic, and I gotta tell you, it's really sweet to see a high gloss finish on something you print when you're so used to matte finish inks.


The inks my boss gave me to try were solvent based inks, which worked well enough, but I'd have to switch emulsions to use them, and the fumes are unbelievable, heh, so fortunately, NazDar makes a really good, high gloss, waterbased ink for this kind of thing, so I've gotten myself some of that. BOO-YA!

I'd really love to do more of this kind of thing, so if you want some stickers done, send me an email!

-P.

Ok, phew, man, I need to get caught up here!

So, about a friggin month ago now. No... more than that! My buddy Patrick Leger, who was in the MFA program at UNCG while I was doing undergrad, contacted me about screenprinting some of his illustrations. So we went back and forth about what he wanted to do, settled the details, arrived at a price, and I set to work.

And ooooooh MAN they came out SO GOOD! Check these bad boys out! It's a 4-color image, and an edition of 50. It's entitled After the Heist. It was really cool to work with Patrick on it, and both of us were really happy with the finished product :)



He wants to do editions of 3 other illustrations, once he sells a few of these to recoop the printing cost. So if you like this and would like to purchase one, please, go to his website and send him an email! Patrick Leger Illustration!

Sadly, that Star Trek illustration on the main page *isn't* one of the ones he wants to get done. But I want to do that one so bad I may offer to do it at cost, hahaha, just so I can have one, lol.

So, I've always HATED mixing ink. It's just always been sort of nightmarish, and until recently it's taken me lots of time and wasting ink to get close to what I want. But my friends, lend me your ears and HEAR me, for I have found THE GODDAMNED LIGHT!!! Print and paint shops often use the PMS system (or Pantone Matching System). It's basically a book of color samples with formulas for mixing those colors, from a stock of standardized pigments. You mix the ingredients by weight, so there's no guess work. My shop mixes ink this way all the time, but I'd never had the ability to use it for one of my own projects until now. HOLY CRAP. Seriously, a color that would have taken an hour to mix took me mere minutes and was perfect on the first try. I am SOLD.

More in a bit! Getting caught up here. It'll prolly be a few posts before I get to halloween!
-P.

So dig, one of my good friends from college is getting married this weekend. (And I'm a groomsman again. Do ya believe it? You think people would learn the first time!)

Anyway. They wanted shirts for the wedding party, so I made it happen. Brittain did the designs, I did the printing. Navy blue Union Aerotex ink (not my favorite) on standard ass gildan shirts.

They came out lookin pretty good!


Haven't been on LJ much lately. Seems my life's been running on the philosophy of "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Pretty much every weekend for the last month or so Hana and I have been either at the beach, or in the mountains, or doing stuff with folks here in charlotte, on top of each of our various creative tinkerings we're doing at home.

I did an art show in Matthews a couple weeks back that was fun, and profitable even if it was small and in the boonies. lol, and Cougar. As far as the eye could see.

Saw Dar Williams in concert at a festival in Asheville.

Been at my job a year now.

Oh, and I'm planning on buying a car. Probably in september. Give or take. My car is due up for inspection then, and I'll be amazed if it'll pass without a hefty bribe. Actually, that probably deserves its own post.

Anyway, yeah, been up to a lot. Later.
-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 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!

What up y'all. Having car trouble this morning. Seems the battery's dead. I hope that's all it is.

While I wait on the tow truck though, thought I'd post this. Went to the Flying Saucer saturday night. Place was packed. I ended up sitting on a trunk in a corner, sketching while I waited for an actual place to sit.

While I was doodling, a waitress came over to me. She'd served me and a couple guys from work when we ate there one day, and she liked the chili pepper and smoke I was drawing on the back of a coaster, so I left it for her. Well, turns out, she'd taped it securely to the front of her receipt/order book. It really brightened my day :)

So, while I was there, I drew this up on the back of another coaster and left it for her. I had some colored pencils with me, so color this time. I thought it came out pretty well. And I like the design, too. I might do this up as a larger piece sometime.

Later,
-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, been looking through my art bookmarks for some fresh inspiration and found that one of my favorite artists, Damarak the Destroyer has updated her site with new work. And oh my sweet christ on a cracker she blows my mind over and over and over again. Check her work out, and enjoy.


Thank god the weekend is here. More later,

-P.

[Edit: Oooh! And she has a blog, which you can now add to your friends list: damkdestroyer]

Phew, holy buckets of hell am I glad this baby is done. I've been working on this whenever I could for more than a month now. I owe a huge thanks to my boss Steve for making me the films I used (with registration marks), letting me use the shop to burn my screen, and tipping me off to a way better way of doing my colors.

Anyway, so I'm guessing most of y'all are probably Simpsons fans, so our fishy buddy here probably needs no introduction, heh.

I was gonna do a process post for this, but since it's about the same was the dead alive poster, I can't be arsed. If you want to see more of the process, check the gallery and read the annotations. You should also totally buy one!

[Edit: Oh, I knew there was something important I was forgetting to say about this. Like the last poster I made, this too was made from hand-drawn color separations. Which, I'm beginning to think may be more trouble than it's worth, heh.]

I can be arsed to have another beer, tho.


OOH! And in other totally sweet news, I'm moving over from automatic to manual printing at work as of TOMORROW! Schweeeeeeeeeeet!!!

-P.

Heh, I have so many other awesome projects in mind, it's actually hard to know which one to pick to do next. There's an art festival in NoDa on the 10th of December, tho, and there's a couple things I want to try to have done before then. Here goes!

Via BoingBoing.

Pinhole camera made out of human skull, by Wayne Martin. Check out this dude's site, the pictures and cameras are incredible.

Later.

-P.

So, a couple months back, 365drawings started posting his work in the printmaking community. A few of his prints looked like they might have been screenprinted, or if not, that they'd be well suited to it. So, I asked him about doing some printing for him and he said yes!

So, we went back and forth a bit about what to make first, and we settled on t-shirts! So, I did the seps, ran the job through the shop I work at and printed up these shirts!

They. Look. AWESOME! Seriously, so cool!

Here's what Carl--365drawings--has to say about 'em:
"Well, as Phil says, he approached me with the idea of screenprinting some of my work and I must say I'm very happy he did :) Not only has it produced, to my mind, a wonderful item to behold but I also got to work and converse with a very helpful and friendly guy. (and there's me thinking altruism was dead!) A very nice first step into the world of professional printing. If you need anything printing Phil is your man!

We have more work planned for production so watch this space. Meanwhile you can buy the t shirt here!! Dig deep!"


So yeah, I did a cool thing! Hehe, we're in talks now about producing a more elaborate print on paper, should be cool. I'll keep ya posted! And go buy that shirt!



BOO YA KA SHA!!!

-P.

Did some more printing for this project last night. Made a few proofs of my sun dude. Just the first two layers--ran out of time. So far so good though. Also jerry rigged a registration device to do this 3 color linocut onto the big paper. Gonna spraypaint some white onto the sky so the sun shows up. Started my own line of one of a kind overprint tees, too :)







Also, if you haven't seen this animation yet, take a few minutes and watch it; it's amazing.


-P.

I've been thinking for a while about a brand name or more accurately a Press name I could use for myself, rather than just producing stuff under my given name. The Shallow End seemed like an obvious choice, but I wasn't sure. It was a name I'd used with a comic for a long time, and changing it over to a printing project somehow didn't feel right. I considered a lot of names, but after finally accepting that silly, shallow, one-liner things are what I really like to make, I can't imagine a more appropriate title than The Shallow End Press :)

The cool thing about a Press though is that it's greater than an individual person, and has the ability to collaborate well with others. And, I realized that I've actually already begun that kind of thing.

For example, the printing I did for Roof Rabbit. I'm not putting media-esque spin on it when I say it was co-produced by The Shallow End Press.

A few weeks ago, I worked with Carl365drawings to produce a batch of shirts with his artwork. Another job by The Shallow End Press. (Pictures coming soon.)

Last week, I printed up three shirt designs by my friend Chris for him to sell. The Shallow End Press rides again. (Pictures coming soon.)

This weekend I'm printing up wedding invitations for my dear friend Beccahatevslove, a production--from start to finish--of The Shallow End Press (Pictures next week, er, with her permission.)



And here's what gets me ridiculous fired up; without even really meaning to, I've already got another job lined up!!!

This weekend in Chattanooga we came across a small art festival on Frazier St. We looked around for a bit and nothing was getting me too excited, though one guy did have some really cool hand blown glass hummingbird feeders. Then, right at the exit was this guy with a bunch of AWESOME paintings that were a combination of hand-painted backgrounds then hand-cut spraypainted stencils in the foregrounds. They were mostly of bands, including U2, the White Stripes and Henry Rollins. They were INCREDIBLY awesome, and I really wanted one, but was hesitant to spend $25 on something I didn't strictly speaking need; I do have a move coming up after all.

I ended up talking to the guy for a while and lo and behold, he actually WENT to Auburn. Tiny, tiny, microscopic little world we're living in. He knew about Standard Deluxe, and I told him about working there, and about working at Stamp now. We talked about shirts for a bit; he had already done some with spraypaint (which I thought looked awesome), but he said he wanted to do some that were a little higher quality and screenprinted. I tried to convince him it was easy, and that with his skill at cutting stencils, he should kick it old school and screenprint with the cut stencil method, but he seemed hesitant.

Anyway, I didn't have one of my cards on me (GOD DAMNIT!) but I got his email address and last night I emailed him. I sent him links to some of my recent work on LJ and made a proposition. I suggested that we collaborate on some shirts; that he cut some stencils, mail them to me, let me print the shirts using his cut stencils, then ship the shirts and stencils back to him.

...

He responded in less than a day, and said yes, he DEFINITELY wanted to do some shirts.

How FUCKING awesome is that!? I didn't go there meaning to find more work or someone to collaborate with, but it just happened, and now I'm gonna get to make some AWESOME shirts. Seriously, this guy's work was really cool.

Anyway, that gets me pretty goddamned fired up.

So man, I really need to get a new page up on theshallowend.com, and get the backs of my ILY Hand cards printed up with my Press info :)

Pretty exciting times, don't ya think!?

:)

-P.

So, there's a good local band called Roof Rabbit. They play sort of folk-punk, heh, and their shows are always a good time. I've been acquainted with their bassist, Mike, for a while. In March, I heard they'd finished a new CD and that a friend of mine was slated to print the CD covers for them, but he wasn't sure he could do it. I offered to do them if it looked like he couldn't, and well, that ended up happening.

The whole thing happened so fast it almost made my head spin. I volunteered the possibility of doing it, and the next day I was getting a call asking if I could do them for sure, and I said yes. The day after that I was getting the screens ready :)

One night, Jason and Mike (two of the guys from the band), and Saya, who did the layout, came over and we set to work. In one night, from about 9:30pm until about 5am we printed 250 CD covers, three colors on the front, one on the inside, plus 20 or so posters, and a shirt.

I was a little nervous, this being my first time flying solo on a project like this, but I surprised myself; I knew exactly what to do in every situation, especially registration, and the printing went off without a hitch. Out of 250, there were less than 10 that actually looked bad. The guys were really happy with how everything came out, and so was I.





I LOVED doing this :) I almost certainly lost money on the project; I originally volunteered to do it for free, but the experience was worth more than money could ever give me. I told the guys that for doing this on the cheap, I want them to give my name to everyone they can who might want this kind of work done, because I want to do a lot more of it. I've even got a couple poster ideas for Roof Rabbit (one I've already started working on).

It really feels like my life just got a huge injection of pure, liquid awesome. Why would I ever do drugs when executing a project like this makes me feel higher than I've ever felt in my life!!!!??? It's like my heart is filled to bursting and my head has literally been spinning with dreams of where this could go.

Thanks guys, for letting me do this for you :)

-P.

I found this site through Jennpac (BLESSINGS BE UPON YOUR CRUSTY HEAD, CHILD!!!!) and I think that everyone, everywhere, ever, should know about it.

Muxtape!! It's a site where people upload mp3 'mixtapes.' When you go to the site, you'll see a big colorful list of names. Each one is a mixtape. Click it to view the list. Click the first song to start playing. I'm not positive, but I think the color represents the general gist of genres (ha!) contained in the mix. So far hot pink seems to do the trick for me.

The site is just fantastic! Great, new music you might not have otherwise heard, put together by people who seem to know what they're doing, heh. So far djshipley is one I keep going back to. And... um, Aubrey, could this be you? Seems like maybe your kind of tunes?


Anyway, jump in! Enjoy! There's no way a site like this can last (and be free) forever.

-P.

Interesting video, ganked from Mr St Georgeazstar78. Don't agree with it all, but it gave me some things to think about. Oh, you should probably respond to his comment toward the end about not having 'hard and fast lines' about things with derision.



Tonight? Pancakes!

-P.

Just found an interview with a street artist named Elbow Toe. Cool work, he integrates woodcuts into his paste-ups. The links in the article are WELL worth checking out, too.

Also, Banksy installs his own works into several major museums. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

-P.

Hey, just a quick post.

These are some links I've seen in Rosemier's journal (ed_dirt) that I've been meaning to repost for a while.

The first, well, I don't think I can put it any better than he did: "Proof positive that we are all more alike than not."

A cool photography project about average american gun owners: Armed America.

This one I found on my own; I saw his work at the NC Museum of Art while I was in Raleigh with camp a few weeks ago. This guy's a really amazing photographer, some of the coolest [photo] work I've seen in a long time: Chris Jordan.

More soon.
-P.

The most awesome keyboard ever conceived? Well, it's here, and available for preorder.

Sadly, it's $1500. The thing is, if I could afford it, I'd buy it. That is an amazing piece of hardware. One day......

In other news, I might go see 300 again today. Dunno, just been in the mood for it lately.

-P.

OMG. the creation of a tara mcpherson screenprint--exc point-- check it out

http://www.juxtapoz.com/jux/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=834&Itemid=121

total eyecandy. oh, yeah, tara is pretty hot, too. god i'm a printmaking dork, lol.


'net life is bland without shift keys. --sad face--
-p.