Comet Moon Cow

Newest design so far --for the young and young at heart, I think.
At the Philadelphia Waldorf School Holiday sale last month, a young boy approached
my table looking wide-eyed at all my shirts, clearly engaged. His mom then informed me
he liked cows and asked if I had a cow shirt. Unfortunately at that time I did not, and I do prefer my subjects to evolve into my design stock organically... but I continued thinking about this idea, since I like cows myself, have been thinking alot about them recently in general; and also, the comet probe
had just landed. I thought about making a cow on a comet, but the comet images from the probe that I saw looked entirely too rugged. Then I remembered the nursery rhyme, “Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat & the Fiddle”--- with the cow jumping over the moon--- and figured that would be a good enough celestial body to include with my cow! This image started out as very small ballpoint pen sketch on the back of an envelope, came together quickly and had hopes of becoming a woodcut. Right now it is a screenprint for purposes of fabric-printing efficiency.
These will also debut this weekend at the Mt. Airy Art Garage holiday sale. I plan to have a good range of kid's sizes --3T (smallest size this image will fit on) up to Youth XL, and some adult sizes too--and ladies tank tops will be ready for the summer.
In the meantime, Happy early Winter Solstice!

The Raven : Corvus Corax

Here is my new Raven shirt, complete with the bird's scientific name, Corvus Corax.
(so as not to be confused with others of the Corvid family).
Ravens are mythologically significant; they are also very intelligent birds.
I thought it a fitting subject to be included in my inventory!
This is a 2 color print, with a pale aqua spot tone and a black ink key image; it looks good on
blue-ish fabrics as well as orange-rust and mustard shades, which really show the blue layer to advantage.

pattern and irregularity of element

a prototype window shade printing, originally done for
Chestnut Hill Yoga.
more to come--but more than likely evolving
into garment prints in my next round of uninterrupted studio time....

More Relief Printing on Shirts

My lovely 1971 vintage Brand etching press gets another workout!
This is the background color of my latest shirt design, printed on fabric from a piece of carved linoleum.
The final key image in black ink will be screenprinted next.
This image appears above. It is an architecturally-based image collaged of photos a friend took of an abandoned pier at Asbury Park, N.J., back in August 2010.

T-shirt Dyeing! and other fabric-oriented stuff to play with

I have taken the plunge, so to speak, in experimenting with dyeing T-Shirts
myself. Had a whole big old pile of white and lighter colored shirts that just
wasn’t happening.... so I got a few colors to play with. I don’t plan to do this all the time
for my shirts, it is rather time-consuming (which is why it had to wait til summer). It
has been a lot of fun. Dharma Trading Co. makes the best Fabric Dyes! The dye and shirts can be seen soaking in my lovely bathtub, as well as the final result of the first color--a deep warm honey-
mustard tan shade! This shirt (with the blue bike logo) is one of my students’ class collaborative T-shirts from a past semester. I dyed a bunch of those class shirts too --I would like to sell them and see how it goes.
Also here are some antique copper batik/ ink stamps I just got from Dharma --again, to play with new design possibilities.
Exciting!