A New T-Shirt

Another Monday, another day of work.  Had a few options for the art part of that.  No immediate need for a good copy of the new supermarket print, so pulling another proof can wait for another day.  I have a small pile of museum papers to grade, but that deadline isn't until Friday, and it's probably best to have a computer handy while I do that, so not a good Studio activity.   Of all the possible new print projects, the logical one would be the new t-shirt for the BAC.

The last time I did a t-shirt for them was back in 2007.  I was in the midst of working on the first mural we would do when I was informed that I had been nominated to design a t-shirt for the BAC, to be sold at a local sailboat youth regatta, and beyond that as well.  To get this deal, we had been told that the shirt had to have a sailing theme and not be just an advertisement for our own organization, so our logo was just a small one on the back, under the collar.  I was able to meet the deadlines and we had the shirt for sale at the event and later as well.  (the whole story can be found on this blog if you care)  The original plan was to pay a percentage of each shirt to me, but then they decided it would be easier to give me a one time fee for my woodcut design.  There was talk of having me design a new one, then talk of making it a youth project to design a new shirt, but nothing happened.  Eventually they all sold out, but many people liked it, and talk of having me design another one came up from time to time.  Now it has been decided to have me propose a new idea. I am the one actual graphic artist in the organization.

My plan is to complete a paper sketch design, which I will share with my contact on this (one of the co-chairs at the BAC), and it approved (and we come to a proper financial arrangement) I'll do the design as a woodcut, and turn it over to them. So far all I know is that it should have the current BAC logo as a prominent part, it will be a monochromatic design, and it was suggested that it involve seashells, since we are a beach town.  Over the past few weeks I have done some internet research, but now is the time to get something on paper.

I have the original block used to make the woodcut print that was used to make the scanned image that was used to print the t-shirt, and so I brought that with me to the Studio today, along with my reference sketches of beach detritus.

I created a rectangle of the same size as the first block (which was used at about 100% on the shirt itself) and then used pencil to work out a composition, then a permanent black marker to produce the design . Here is the result of today's session:

I was told to keep the logo as solid black, but I may play with that in the next sketch. The logo on our website is gradated in different bands of color.  That we can't do, but I can play with different shades of gray with mark making, and the roundness of the letters and the proximity to each other sets up a rhythm not unlike the shells in my design, and it might be interesting to play with shell-like cross-contour lines in the letters.

No Molly today, so I was able to listen to music as I worked.  I had brought with me the Dave Brubeck Quartet's album Time Out, the best selling jazz album of all time, and containing the best selling jazz single of all time- Take Five.  What made the album stand out was that the songs all have unusual rhythms, influenced by a world wide visit by the musicians, and none in standard 4/4 time.  What put it in my mind today was that a recent dream I had included the album's lead song, Blue Rondo A La Turk.  When that disc ended, one from my Studio library, Miles Davis's 'Round About Midnight which opens with his legendary take on the Thelonius Monk song.

I also took time to talk to Nichole about teaching stuff.  Some debate over whether or not we will have Wednesday night's class.  We both want to, but so far there is just one sign up.  We really need more than that to make it practical, so if we don't have more by tomorrow, we may cancel it and put our efforts into the one for week 3, which currently has four sign ups.  That will be figured out tomorrow.