Fresh off the press - Custom order

Thought I'd share these bachelor party t shirts I printed up late last week. A shirt was made for each member of the party, with the Bachelor getting the red one. The design was supplied to me and the shirts were printed by hand with water based inks on American Apparel sheer jersey shirts. If you're interested in custom prints, either printing your design or having custom artwork made, let me know.

Bear Fight!

Last time I was at Reading Frenzy I picked up this book. The cover drew me in right away, it's 3 colors silkscreened and the title feels like felt. The book above is #4 from their limited run of 500 and features 77 different artist take on the title Bear Fight and I have to say, bears have it pretty tough on these pages. From fighting the common cold, badgers, space men, bees, cops and even bad relationships there's no end to the conflict and strife of a bears life.

You can pick this up from Banner Year Press for $12 directly and can learn more about all the artist involved here

I can help but think that this Bear v. Cat doodle of mine was inspired by this book

Party in a Can Tilteed.com Submission

It's been a while since I've tried my hand at a tshirt contest, but I want to do more of it now that I have more time I can spend on it. This, of course, will be in addition to my own prints and designs that I'll continue to make available directly at my shop. The design above originaly started as a Bird BBQ but eventually turned into the can party as I worked on it. If you'd like to see the above get printed, take a few moments and vote it up here at Tilteed. Thanks!

Space Bear

Another space themed doodle from this weekend...

Space-i-Corn Tim!

So yesterday was the "Hip Happening Art Bazaar" which was not really "Happening" per say. With the Bite of Oregon going on, and apparently 6 other events ( including a sand castle competition in Lincoln city). The Bazaar had a very low volume of foot traffic. Mostly people who lived in the neighborhood and were on their way to either get coffee or head elsewhere for the day. That said, I did meet some new people, made a few t-shirt and sticker sales, ate some amazing cookies, and got some good doodle time in. Like Spaceicorn Tim, an Astronaut Unicorn searching the cosmo's for more of his kind while fending off evil alien Kurge who's out to get Tim's head and mount it on his wall of earthly mythical creatures.

Mini Stickers!!

These mini stickers are fresh off the press today! While silk screening stickers may not seem the most prudent way to print them, it is at least the most fun. These stickers are 1.7" wide by 2.75" high. This allowed me to use an entire 8.5" x 11" sheet with no waste, getting 20 stickers per page! I printed two sets of 20, one in red and one in black for a total of 800 stickers!

I stepped up the setup at The Pull a few months back with the introduction of an exposure unit. So far I've been amazed at what a difference it makes in the level of detail I can pull off. This run was printed using a 230 mesh screen with a dual coat of emulsion, which was crucial for the very fine line and font details. As always, everything was printed using water based inks.

Anyways, if you're in PDX tomorrow come join CuriousDoodles and I at First Thursday! I'll be giving out stickers and showing of my new stuff. Hope to see you there!

Monsters V. Robots

I mentioned these prints in a previous post but have finally gotten them up into my etsy shop. Each one is hand silkscreened and chronicles the start of the Monster V. Robot wars that are sure to occur once they've finished wiping us out. Each illustration was printed only 10 times, creating 10 sets of the 4 prints, each signed and numbered on the back. You can buy them all together for $120 or pick and choose at $40 per panel.They come with an easy to affix wall hanger and each panel was treated with a light poly coat to protect the image. The plywood is FSC and the inks are non toxic and water based. Everything was hand made by me. You can order them from here.

New in the Shop

My Tweet & Qwack greeting cards are now available in my Etsy shop. Each card was hand silk screened using water based inks on Mohawks 100% recycled Via Vellum Kraft paper. They're the perfect way to say just about anything.

Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed - Liz Prince

I've been meaning to post about this book for a while now. This collection of comics are adorable, personal, sweet and funny. They involve corn on the cob kisses, kitties, boogers, snuggling, and more as Liz Prince journals her relationship with Kevin. If you don't know Liz Prince, well...you should.

The funny part about this book is that Laura and I both bought it for each other last Christmas. She picked it up while she was visiting in Texas, at a store called We are 1976 in Dallas, and I picked it up here in Portland at Reading Frenzy. It was definitely one of those absurdly cute and kinda weird moments when we opened each others gifts.

StoermerVille - Texas/NYC trip part 1

I just got back from a long vacation. Laura and I spent the 4th with her family in Texas, then some time in Dallas and we wrapped up the trip with a few days in NYC. I'm working on getting some condensed trip comics made. This is my first, and there's lots left out but it's some of the highlights.

Monster in a Suit

I've been messing around and learning how to use some Copic markers I recently picked up. This guy is just a quick lil monster doodle, any ideas as to what he's saying?

Shooo Rain!

I've been traveling in Texas for the past week and it's rained almost every day. It was even raining when we got off the plane at DFW and from what I've heard it's been nice and sunny back in Portland. So, I believe the rain is stalking us... and since the forecast for the next leg of our trip in NYC is predicting rain there too I decided it was time to put an end to it. Hear me rain? Go home!

Big Feets

I'm working on a project for a friend of mine that involves a Big Foot, and I've been having a lot of fun doodling different sasquatches that I thought you might enjoy a peak.

First Thursday with CuriousDoodles and Diskgrunt!!!

Fresh off the Press! Tweet and Qwack cards!

I've been pretty busy the past two weeks, mostly printing stuff for other people, so it's been nice to have the press to myself the last couple of days, allowing me to get my "Tweet" and "Qwack" cards printed up! These will be available in my shop soon but if you happen to be in downtown portland for First Thursday art walk you can swing by to visit CuriousDoodles and I. We'll be between Kearny and Lovejoy on 13th from about 5pm till 9pm (weather permitting).

I'll also be showcasing a set of limited edition "Monsters v. Robots" wood panel prints tomorrow ( more on those later). So come visit and check out all the great artist and crafters. Thnx.

Reunion Shirts that Don't Suck

This is the second Reunion shirt to come out of The Pull this summer! Super low run ( only 15 shirts made along with a handful of posters) but a lot of fun to draw and print. This was originally design for an AA slate shirt, but do to the hastiness of the job we ended up using these heather gray shirts. While I still like the design, the line work doesn't pop as much as it could and part of me would love to see a second color. Click the image below for a closer look at the details of the illustration!

And speaking of reunion shirts that don't suck, check out this shirt CuriousDoodles recently printed at The Pull.

If anyone needs custom tee's designed/printed, let me know.

Minor Changes to the Blog

I've been pretty frustrated with the way images appeared in my blog, making most of my comics unreadable unless you clicked on it to open the full size image in a new window/tab. Finally, after a few complaints about my last post, I decided to take some time to fix it.

So I switched over to Edit Html and found 2 interesting things.

1) Blogger/Google set a scaled size for an uploaded image to display in your post

For my post blogger set the image size to 400px x 160px, really to small to read.

I simply adjusted that up to 600px x 250px But then I got a large fuzzy image.

That lead me to this second bit.

2) Blogger/Google creates a custom preview image at that scaled size. So you need to adjust your link to point to the original image and not the preview.

Great right? Wrong… Depending on your blogger template your post is probably now being cut off because it extends beyond the Post border. I found a quick easy tutorial at BlogBulk that shows how to edit your template to widen your blog. I've set mine now for a total size of 750px. This expands the post area to 600px and squeezes the side bar down to 120px.

Let me know what you think of the changes. I'm editing some of my more recent post so they fit this new standard better.

How to speak midwestern...

I just got back from visiting family in Illinois, and I have to say the amount of beef and cheese I ate was pretty absurd... I think I'm lucky to live where I do, there's so many healthy options for groceries and restaurants and a culture that promotes both eating right and respecting where your food comes from. My whole visit, I kept thinking about Food Inc., but there didn't seem to be much of a choice if you didn't want mass produced food.

i Heart Art PDX - Promo Silkscreen Flyers

I Heart Art PDX is a unique collaboration between Etsy.com, PNCA, and the Museum of Contemporary Craft that's goal "...is to support and advocate for Portland’s vibrant community of makers by fostering dialogue, inspiring activity, and offering access to resources that are otherwise difficult to find."

I was approached by Isaac Watson on doing some promotional flyers for them to hand out during this weekends "Super Colossal Spring Sale" that Crafty Wonderland is hosting at the convention center. Given that I missed the registration deadline for the craft fair, I thought this would be a great way to get some exposure there for my press, The Pull, while helping out the I Heart Art PDX organization there.

Everything about this project was done pretty last minute and in the middle of another print job. I was supplied the logo artwork and ended up creating the lil' monster illustration and adjusting the flyer layout to fit all the elements in. Once the design was done I was able to get 300 flyers printed in about 9 hours. That's not the fastest I've done, but but given I was working on my own, and throwing in a flash dry between color hits, I think I did pretty well time wise.

If you want to get one, be sure to swing by Crafty Wonder Land this weekend and visit the I Heart Art PDX table. On the back of the flyer are dates for various workshops being hosted throughout the spring and summer.

When I finished up my print job and started cleanup, I cracked open a Full Sail "A Light-Bodied Nonetheless Hella Good Limited Edition Lager" and was greeted with a very satisfying message.

Slo-Mo Beardo