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.

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, 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'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.