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August 21, 2005
The Agony of Defeat
I like to design and produce my own clothing. Not the actual fabrication of textile or the stitching together business but the patterns and images that go on already existing vestments. As seen in my first sentence there are two halves to this process, the first being design in which I feel both confident and competent to rise to the occasion; it is, in fact, the field in which I hold my degree. The second variable in the equation is production which is always an adventure. To be a successful creative person, or artist as they are sometimes known, one must have a firm grasp on both. Many people come up with great ideas and our world is filled with legions of talented craftsmen, the idea is to be in possession of both skill sets.
The entirety of my creative process begins and ends in the computer which is magnificent when the intended outcome is pretty pixels for throughout the duration of a project I have absolute control. When an article of clothing is concerned, however, I have a myriad of choices to consider: I could continue my hands off approach by stooping so low as purchase hideous iron-ons, employ the horrible services of café-press, have them screen-printed at great expense or figure out a way to do it myself. The last choice is often best because it joins together low cost, good image quality and the satisfaction of a job well done.
My prior endeavors into the world of clothing stenciling have been, by and large, successful...until tonight. I had a design done that I wanted to print for a while and figured that putting inks on top of one another would go as smoothly as before. It turns out that you can retain straight lines if you put white on top of black but not vice-versa. The white paint I have is so thick that it creates a non-absorbant layer on top of the fabric that causes the black paint to bleed all 'whily-niley'. The printing was going swimmingly well til the application of the very last layer of text and disc details. Needless to say I was crushed, not just because I had sunk hours into both the cutting and printing but because the shirt I ruined cost $16 from American Apparel. I think from now on all my future projects will be one-color jobs since they print the cleanest. Below you can see pictures of my intended design and how it came out; perhaps the subject matter doomed it from the start :)
I'm not sure why I posted this but I wanted everyone to see that an integral part of the creative process is failure and the ensuing desire to learn from your mistakes and try doing it all over again. Now if only I could have the same mentality about dating and understanding the fairer sex. I do have one more American Apparel shirt, however, and I plan on making it into something pretty rad.
My intended design.
The finish printed shirt.
A detail shot of the ink bleeding on the text. Notice the crisp lines on the speech bubble in comparison the the muddy edges of the text.
A detail shot of the ink bleeding on the disc details. Again, all the other edges (especially the black disc edge) are all clean and precise.
Posted by Jon at August 21, 2005 08:00 PM