Category Archives: New skills

T-shirts, prints and shop fronts, it’s all go.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Bonnie_girl_design©JonTremlett2016

At the time of the last post I’d just sent the second batch of t-shirt ideas over to my contact to see if he would go for any of them. I didn’t have to wait too long this time for a reply, he picked the one shown here. It would be tempting to be a little disappointed with this result after all the work that’s been done, but this is outweighed by the knowledge that I learned a great deal during the process, and have actually ended up with some images that I really like and can do something with in the future.
So, one of the things that I’m going to do is create some hand made prints. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time. With all these fresh images to now play with it seemed like as good a time as any to have a go. The way the designs have worked out, in very obvious black and white format, they will hopefully lend themselves very easily to a basic printing process.

Lino_cut_1©JT2016

To be honest with you I haven’t done anything like this for a very long time. Wondering which printing process to try led to lots of questions, the answers to which became self evident quite quickly. There are lots of different approaches to take ranging from the utterly basic to highly involved, simple block printing through to complex etching processes. I plumbed for the simple and settled on having a go with lino cut printing. The last time I dabbled with this process was back at school many years ago, so any learning that I had gained back then was gone and forgotten. Again, another opportunity to learn something new. The shot here shows my starting point. On the left is the design I wanted to transfer onto the lino sheet ready for cutting, on the right is it drawn out onto said lino. I have reversed the image, so that it will print the right way around and started to make some tentative cuts into the surface to create the relief to take the ink. This is as far as I’ve got for now and I’ll update the next steps in a subsequent post.

Bill_B's_New_shop_front2016

The final image here is something else entirely. Regular visitors to the blog may remember that back last summer I designed some t-shirts for my local bike shop, Bill Bunn Motorcycles, here in Ealing. It’s great to report that they’ve been selling well and the guys there wear their shirts religiously when working in the shop. I visited there a couple of weeks back only to find that they have undertaken the next steps in their shop refresh and gone and had new front signage made based around the shirt design. I had to take some pictures. They tell me the box signs are back lit, so at night it’s all illuminated which I’m looking forward to seeing sometime soon. I’m immensely chuffed that they have considered the design good enough to take it to this end. A big thanks to them for boosting my confidence and paying my work such a compliment.

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A good pen is an expensive tool, look after it.

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The finished workshop polo shirt.

The finished workshop polo shirt.

So here is the shirt design for Bill Bunn Motorcycles, my local bike shop, in its finished form. The guys very kindly gave me a polo shirt in way of payment, which makes one feel very good about the idea of bartering. The quality of the screen printing is really good and the level of line and detail they have managed to keep is very high. A great result.

This black and white block reductive drawing is becoming strangely addictive. Partly I think it has to do with the process being quite quick, you see results quite fast but, it also has much to do with the simple pleasure of pen use and the decision making process. Areas of the drawing are either black or white and that’s it, this way or that, simple. As more drawings take shape it becomes easier to decide which way to go, ones ability to “see” what gets left out becomes clearer. It is amazing how the eye and brain are able to build a complete image from only a rather basic framework of information.

Big_Ink_CB750©JonTremlett2015

This activity is also helping me to complete some drawings which have been lying dormant in the drawing chest because I couldn’t decide on how to finish them. This indecision invariably comes from a lack of confidence and a worry about messing something up having invested a great deal of time and effort into it. For some reason this temerity seems to disappear once I start thinking of completing them in this style. One example is the drawing above. It must have sat in the drawer for about a year while I dithered over the final execution. However, armed with a couple of freshly filled Rotring pens it all came together rather quickly. there is still some background to complete to bring it on a bit further but essentially a neglected work has taken on new life.

Techy pens1

One aspect of working in this way is that I’ve realised that I actually have a rather unhealthy pen fetish! I’m actually a bit of a technical pen nerd in reality. It is a necessary part of using these things that one has to be rather fastidious about their cleanliness in order to get the best out of them, and I find myself enjoying this often messy job. There’s something terribly satisfying about making the first lines after a thorough clean and refill of my most oft used pen. What strikes me as a bit excessive is why I have to have so many of the things? At least a dozen at the last count, though not all are in working order. Long neglected at the bottom of a drawer, one or two are utterly dried up and solid with ink residue, a rock hard shellac like substance that seems to be impervious to most solvents. Prolonged soaking in cleaning fluid, often weeks, helps to release things but often the smaller sized nibs are beyond help. I have no idea why I have so many, like many bits of drawing equipment we just seem to accumulate them unwittingly over time. I remember purchasing my original Rotring box set over 30 years ago, second hand from a market stall but where the others have come from is anyones guess. Likely bought because I’d forgotten I had that size already or they were so bunged up I just went and got a new one rather than bother cleaning them out. Profligate and lazy days to be sure. One thing being a freelancer teaches you though, is looking after your stuff so hopefully m nibs can look forward to a more pampered and productive life from here on.

There’s treasure to be found in discount bookstores.

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Pen&inkbook

It may sound rather overblown to make the claim above but, it does seem to be invariably true. Yes, of course it depends very much on what you’re looking for, and let’s face it, some of our hobbies and interests are somewhat esoteric in nature but, armed with an open mind and an open eye it’s amazing what you can find. Discount bookstores, like charity shops, are always worth popping into because you never know what they’ve got on offer, and any purchase it thus unexpected and a surprise.

Hence the reason for sharing the above book with you today. I found it quite by chance a couple of weeks ago in just such a store in Chiswick in West London. My good friend Ben mentions it regularly so I thought I’d drop in one day and take a browse. Immediately I saw this book I knew I had to have it, and at four quid it was a steal.

Recently I have been attempting to learn how to get a bit more digital with some of my drawings. A request to design a t-shirt has prompted a flurry of rather uncoordinated activity as I grapple with the process of converting a complex ink drawing into a vectorised artwork for screen printing. Luckily there are myriad guides and tutorials available on-line to assist me in learning the ins and outs of image tracing in Illustrator, and pixel fiddling in Photoshop, all of which have proved invaluable.

Pen&inkbook01

I mention this because this learning activity has given rise to a couple of thoughts. Firstly, the whole process of vectorising images would be a whole lot easier if I created drawings better suited to vectorising in the first place. The second is that in order to do that I need to learn some new tricks to apply during the drawing activity which help in the division of an image into dark and light areas and create ways of texturing, when needed, that translate well when making the jump to digital. This is where this book comes in as it is stuffed with information on how to create all manner of drawing details that can apply to the above.

The books author, Robert Gill, is a technical illustrator by trade and the book is full to the brim with his observations, expertise, tricks, hints and learnings, all garnered from a lifetime of experience. There are chapters that cover everything from basic perspective techniques to creating textures, from rendering plants and trees to drawing basic figures. There is even a section on equipment with a great segment covering Rotring technical pens and how to get the best out of them. I love it.

There is one more aspect to why I’m so enamoured by this book, and it is this. Drawing is a lifelong learning experience and something we all want to be better at. Through constant practise and experimentation we do get better at it but, there are times when you need extra input to boost your learning and skills. Since leaving art college and witnessing the transition from analogue to digital media within the design studio environment, I don’t recall being taught or learning anything new relating to analogue drawing techniques, other than what I’ve learned through my own scribbling. What lies behind a persons ability to create images through drawing is a large reservoir of accumulated knowledge covering everything from proportion and perspective, to materials and techniques. Design school stuffed a great mountain of this knowledge into my head many years ago. Outside a formal teaching program we have to add to this learning through self discovery, using practise and experimentation to hone our skills. But there are some things which we need to learn in different ways. This book is just such a tool for this purposes. Pen and ink drawing is one of my favourite drawing styles but, finding an easily accessible reference for learning new techniques has always been hard. This book has most of what I’m after, right in front of me in black and white.

Pen&inkbook02

It’s like finally having the analogue equivalent of a cool set of digital plug-ins for Illustrator or Photoshop. I don’t need to use it all the time, copy anything from it or read every page but, it is there to refer to and glean information from whenever I want to consider creating new effects through better mark making. Much of it may seem rather old fashioned but pen and ink drawing is just that, a pen, some ink and a piece of paper, nothing complicated. The complex part is training the soft, organic creature holding the pen and the little grey matter engine that powers it.

Here’s a link to the book, I found it on Amazon here.