The good ol’ Goodjoe is hosting another t-shirt contest in behalf of the Fender Music Foundation.  They’re looking for shirts that best suits their message “Give. Music. Life.”  The first 10 to submit a design will be getting a free Goodjoe t-shirt, and the winner gets $300 cash from Goodjoe as well as a Squier by Fender Deluxe Hot Rails Strat Electric Guitar with a decal of the winning design displayed on it.  Pretty cool, huh?

The design that I have submitted for voting is called “chalkboard guitar”.  Whenever I think of school and education, I think of chalkboards.  I took a picture of my wife’s guitar and used the pen tool in photoshop to make paths so that the curves of the guitar would look nice and smooth.  Then I did some texture-erasing to it, and this is what I came up with.

You can vote on it at the Goodjoe Fender Contest.

This was a fun piece to work on.  It has a little bit more symbolism than I usually put into my work, which is what I think sets it apart from the rest.

The viewer can look at this design and see two opposing perspectives:

1. Swimming against the current. Sometimes the only way to express our true individuality is to not do what everybody else is doing.  The turtle that is swimming against the current has hope in his eyes and a smile on his face, happy with the decision he has made to be different.  His shell is decorated with a pattern of arrows, suggesting that he is will to push forward in order to obtain his goals, no matter what the those around him are doing.

2. Going with the flow.  This turtle has decided that sometimes it’s better to not get too caught up in “plans” and “goals” but to just play things by ear.  He has a tic-tac-toe grid on his belly to show that he plays his hand according to the circumstances given to him at any given moment.

You’re welcome to support it over at the Goodjoe!

I actually made this design in anticipation of last years Halloween derby at shirt.woot, but they made it a “costume” derby instead.  It’s been collecting dust on my hard drive ever since…

This is the first design that I made using the technique that I like to call “erase-art”.  I put down a blog splotch of ink on the image (on a separate layer) and start erasing it away until it leaves kind of a grungy, sketchy look behind.  I did that with the grass that the horse is kicking up, the fence off in the lower left corner, and the lighting that is coming from the horses eyes and nose, and the pumpkin’s face.  I’ve used that technique in other pictures since then, like The Leviathan, A New Calling, and Joan of Arc – Righteous Indignation.

“What’s Under the Bed?” printed at shirt.woot today.  It took 3rd place with 689 votes.  It was a tight race to the end, and Kris Robinson and I appreciate all those who voted for our shirt.  We hope you enjoy it!

This week is the “Double-Take Derby” over at shirt.woot.  They take the honorable mentions from the derbies from the last 3 months and put them up for voting one last time.  This is the first time that I’ve been able to participate in this derby, and I have three entries up for voting: “Dude, Watch This!”, “What’s Under the Bed?”, and “The Electric Slide”.

I appreciate your support!  :D

We were way excited when we got an email from the Goodjoe staff this past week, stating that they wanted to print my “i AM in shape” design!  They asked me to add all of the color choices that It would look good on to give people some variety, so we decided that black, navy blue, asphalt, kelly green, orange and cranberry were pretty good choices.  If you pre-order this week it’ll only cost ya $10, and you’ll get to pick from one of those colors. After the first week it’ll be $18, and they’ll only keep the colors that were asked for the most.  Snatch one for yourself before it’s too late!

and here’s the end result:

I kinda liked the “sloppy joe” look of it the first time, as opposed to the clean lines and colors on the octopus in the second one.  I wonder if it would be doing better or worse if I had left it on…

Check it out at the derby here.

This week was the 100th derby over at shirt.woot.  They chose to go with “mystery”, which was not only the theme of the derby, but also the way the site was run.  They replaced the names of all of the submitters with “****” so that people would have to vote for their favorite designs, rather than their favorite designers.  It was a great idea in theory, but the users found a way to uncover the hidden names, so a lot of people were found out anyways.  I usually submit under “noisdois”, but to avoid detection (and to really play up the “mystery” theme), I made another account that would say “nicetry” every time you tried to peek at the artist’s name.

Before this derby even started I asked Kris Robinson if he wanted to collaborate on a piece.  We threw around a couple of ideas, and this was the design we chose to go with (here is the other idea we could have gone with.  I haven’t yet decided if we went with the right one).  He did the line work (flawlessly, I might add), and I did the coloring.  I chose to go with orange for a couple of reaons:

1.  The orange shirt color is rarely picked for printing.  The only one in the reckoning right now is “The Cake is a Liar”, which ironically has been around longer than any other shirt on the list.  I’d love to win a design with a color that is not chosen very often, just to shake things up a little

2.  It really was my favorite color for this design.  I tried it with a couple of different colors (green and blue to be specific), and though they looked pretty good, it didn’t quite pack the punch that this orange color gives it.

Anyways, it’s been a real pleasure working with Kris to finish this design.  He’s a good man, and an incredible artist.  I learned a lot, and I’ve also learned that I’ve got a lot to learn :/

Check out his website.

I originally made this design for the contest over at Meu World.  It got enough support to get second place, which made me $250!  The contest ended at the end of may, but they haven’t quite taken it down yet (they’re being a tad slow to update their website) so you can still go on and vote, but it won’t do any good.

So I’ve decided, since enough people liked this one, to submit it to Cameesa.  I’ve never done a sub there before, and I don’t know how well it’ll do there, but I figured I might as well give it a shot.  Cameesa works a little differently than other t-shirt websites, so I’ve posted the tutorial here.

I had to change the colors a little bit to make it work with their templates, but I still like it.  I hope you do too!

I have decided to re-submit this design to a different website.  It was suggested to me that I submit it to springleap.com, so I did.  It’s not doing to bad right now, I think it has potential to print.  If you like it, please hop on over and vote on it!