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.

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.

Howdy yall! I'm very pleased to announce that I've finally worked my iPod cases up to the point that they're ready for the general populace. And I now have four of the li'l beauties available at my etsy store--3 skulls and a cupcake. So go check em out!

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade flameswithin.etsy.com

And hopefully sometime soon I'll have cases available for other versions, such as the iPod Touch/iPhone and iPod Nano! If you'd like me to custom make you a case to fit your device, just let me know!

Cheers!
-P.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Genghis Blues
I was scrounging around Netflix last week when I stumbled on one of the greatest finds EVAR!!!!! A documentary called Genghis Blues. It's about this blind, American blues singer named Paul Pena, and his trip to a place you've never heard of, called Tuva.

You might know one of Paul's songs, without realizing it.

Pena came across a recording of this weird, throaty, whistling music on Radio Moscow one day and was fascinated. He searched high and low until he tracked down the source--Tuvan throat singing. He taught himself how to do it, and by chance performers from that region came to play where he was living in San Francisco.

After the show, he went up to them and throat sang for them. The performers were so impressed and his voice was so low that they immediately named him "cher shimjer" (earthquake), and told him he had to come to Tuva to perform.

The documentary is about Paul and his trip to Tuva, and it's just fantastic. It was made by amateurs, so some of the editing and cinematography isn't great, but it's heartfelt and FASCINATING. And the courage and determination of that man, to travel to the other side of the world, to a province in southern russia that 'bum fuck egypt' doesn't come close to describing, learning what he could of the Tuvan language by translating it through mechanical readers into russian, then into english, and not only having a fantastic time, but winning one division of the competition.

That is some strength, man. And goddamn it gets me fired up. If you're into other cultures at all, do yourself a favor and watch this movie.

Here's a couple good examples of throat singing via youtube:
Paul and Kongar-ol Ondar, from the movie
Huun Huur Tu in a beautiful example of one of the styles, called sygyt
And Paul himself demonstrating some karigyraa, and why he got the name 'earthquake.'

Oh... and... I can do it, too.

-P.

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, I had some leftover lamb (er, and NOTHING else lol), so I decided to go pick up some more spinach and make lamb saag for dinner again tonight. I revised the recipe a bit, though and OH HOLY SHIT IT'S GOOD. It still isn't quite like what I'm used to saag being like, but it's a lot closer and HOLY SHIT IT'S GOOD.

I basically doubled the amount of olive oil, doubled the amount of curry powder, used a bit less spinach and a bit more yogurt.

OM NOM NOM SO FUCKING GOOD NOM NOM OM.


(Like, it was good enough that I updated my el-jay JUST to talk about it.)

Eff.

-P.

PS - Oh, and tomorrow? Spending the whole day with CameronKatie and BeccaChris drinkin, grillin beef ribs, and brewing beer.

Oh no no, dear, that shade of green totally doesn't suit you.

;)

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.

If typography makes your cilia wave excitedly, then you must watch this video. I laughed so hard I almost cried.



Enjoy.

-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.

I'm still working on this project, slowly gradually. I spraypainted out a little spot for the sun dude, and printed him on there. The colors for the day and evening version are slightly different. Next up comes the ground layer, with some flora and fauna.

Here's the first two layers of the sun.


And here's the sun dude by itself:




I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to do it, but I'm actually thinking about making a mini version of this project over the front of a whole t-shirt! If I do, it'll look badass because the sun will be all up over the right shoulder!

Have a good day!
-P.

So, remember this little sun dude I posted a week or so back? Well yesterday I finished the next part in that project. Anyway, it's the sky, in which that sun dude will sit. I did two versions; one day-ish, and one sunset-ish. Not sure which one I like better; they each have their charms. The blends couldn't have worked more beautifully; they both look like perfect skies.





Here's a shot of the ink for the sunset blend sitting in the screen if anyone's interested.

Oh, and since I'm a huge dork, I made a couple youtube videos of me printing this. I wish my camera took vids longer than 30 secs.

Here are the other two. Heh, I was watching the House marathon on USA.

Oh, and while I had the ink out, I did this, too. If you remember my christmas cards from this past year, the heart in the center of this stencil is the heart I cut out of the stencil from the card fronts.

I love days off.

Boo. Ya. Ka.

-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.