these pics suck, my camera is broken so I took them on my phone. not "pro-gear," I know... I haven't been taking enough pictures of my stuff though, so it's better than nothing? Two new prints here, and next week-ish: Bellemah, Ya Ya Boom and more!

First: Zoltan the Mad Hungarian and his Orkestar! An arty, cool three color print. http://www.myspace.com/zoltantrio Buy some! On forest green or red.




Second: Barack On! Barack Obama with the Jay-z millionaire sunglasses and Mic jaggar's body. My design! Buy these at Mei Long http://www.myspace.com/meilongmusic or Booty Green shows http://www.myspace.com/meilongelectro. Also, vote for him so I can make more shirts! I know: I make money from a democrat in office?!? White on red and soon blue on pink.

Here's the Bellemah ones I just finished! I'll be printing more of these on black shirts in white tomorrow. the shirts are actually blue, my phone sucks!

Have you thought about submitting to Threadless? I think they'd dig the Obama shirt, and they pay $2000 (plus $200 more in cash or $500 in gift certs) if they select your design.

Also, have you checked out etsy.com? Could be good repository for your non-band-specific stuff.

The Obama shirt was a job though. I don't claim ownership of anything I design for someone else; they paid for it and in this case copyrighted it and it belongs to them! I only keep display rights for examples in my portfolio. Nobody would want to order design work that might be sold out from under them to someone else or have to compete with the guy who you paid for it! Honestly, if I charged normal market prices for my design work I'd never have to make shirts, but I always throw it in for pretty cheap or get dicked on that end (I don't often charge upfront for design, so end up doing a bunch of work and then they change their mind and disappear, or I have to drag out design jobs because I have to keep stopping to take in real money). I enjoy the work so it's not a big deal, but I am too casual and miss too many opportunites, it's true.

I'll be checking into threadless (I got this tip yesterday in fact) and other places soon. I'm just hitting touring season though, so am up to my neck in other people's work right now! Ideally, I'd like to go all retail with my own designs, and hire someone to do some of the shirt and button for-hire work, but that's a couple years off probably. My kid starts kindergarten in August, so I'll be able to do real full-time- not here and there work all day shit- for the first time in five years! I'll see how it goes after that. I've also been contacted by full armor and a couple other places that do submission deals. So I actually knew about this stuff and am stupid for not doing it sooner. Ideas are my strength- besides the dozen screens I have of my own designs I have another 50 or so still on my computer! No overhead too.

Since I'm a full-time parent, I usually have only a limited time to do work, a bizarre schedule of free time from 10 pm to 10 am, so I usually have to stick to things that are guaranteed upfront money in order to pay my bills, which means work-for-hire (I actually spend an hour a day answering emails and such!). I still end up turning down about a third of the work offered to me. I have my own designs and make my own shirts, and have sold them on my etsy account and on ebay before (people from Finland like my shirts for some reason?), and I have shirts at Owl Green's and have sold my own shirts at shows and stuff. I've worked out deals with other retail situations before, but just can't keep stocked or spare a bunch of time and money if it means turning down cash in my hand (and they usually want exclusive designs, and on american apparel, and definitely want consistencyetc). I never have the capital to do real mass-production, and usually have to limit myself to one or two color because of the time contraints. It's a pain to deal with online shopping carts and stuff when you have to update size availablity everytime you sell something. Blah, blah, blah- but yeah, I agree!

I know, you are thinking, "why are you here on Rocksquawk so much while turning down work?" it's because I come here while waiting for something to print, or dry, or some filter on a huge photoshop file to run, etc, while giving my kid a bath or washing dishes or whatever, so I just pop in and out- multitasking- and it wouldn't be productive time anyway. I can almost never get back to back hours to work, so just do ten things at once all day long.

Sure, but how do you really feel?

oh- you want a concise answer? Hmm, ok! How about

fuck you!

Is that short enough for ya?

quote:

Originally posted by department of mistakes repeated:
oh- you want a concise answer? Hmm, ok! How about

fuck you!

Is that short enough for ya?

Now that's what I'm talking about.

this week, shirts from Ya Ya Boom and Amplab! next up is Cherry Tempo!

Cherry Tempo shirts- this pic REALLY doesn't give their design credit! Also, some better pics of the Barack shirts- which I WILL be selling online after I set that up after this weekend (by the way, if anyone wants to commission some McCain, Hilary, etc shirts, I am equal opportunity!).

Up next is Gracchi and Ghostkimo!

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of The Gracchi shirts I did. The look like this though:

also in red, pink and grey!

Hit by a Bus shirts! This is the finest print I've done, with very tiny delicate lines. On Blue, but pictured here is red and pink.



Ghostkimo! This is the biggest print I've done, 17 inches tall!


Up next is mostly buttons, though I have a few bands on the line for shirts that haven't gotten back to me. In the meantime, here's couple of people about town wearing shirts of mine!

Matt from Paper Tigers and Old Beans wearing one of my "I'm cool because I'm in a band" shirts! I need to make some more of these, since they have sold out the first day every time.


Noelan wearing one of my limited edition Josh King comemorative "want" shirts:


Again: anyone sends me a picture of anyone wearing a shirt I did will get it posted someplace!

are the "barack on" shirts still for sale?

They ARE still on sale. There are some at Owl Green's 112 Second SW. You can also order them right from me- email iheartmachine@hotmail.com, or pick them up at Booty Green or Mei Long shows!