Hello from Andy and Tobie

[andyandtobie]

Hey guys, my wife Tobie and I have posted here a few times, but always because we desperately needed solutions, and never took the time to properly introduce ourselves.  Sorry about that!  But as always, the people here have just been fantastic, and bailed us out when we needed it.  I make my living as an artist working out of my home studio, and about a year ago we decided to expand into screen printing and set up a tiny 12' x 12' shop in our spare room.  Why sell a piece of art once if you could sell it hundreds of times, we thought, right?  So we've been trying as hard as we can to learn as much as possible, and get our quality up before we really do any advertising.  With all the amazing information on this forum, we're sure we'll get there- but we've still got a long way to go.

So here are photos of the three jobs we've done so far.  The first shot is "Shirt Number One," which we're keeping to make ourselves feel better when things aren't going right.  Printed on a blank yanked from my wife's closet, we decided to back off the element in the dryer after that one.  The finished fishing boat job was printed with Matsui color on Comet White with Matsui Undercoat Binder to stop dye migration on 50/50 shirts.  The girl on the chopper was Matsui color on white cotton, much easier.  The auto body shirt we just finished yesterday, as our first project in plastisol.  We bought the QCM QMX mixing system for this, on 159 white, after upgrading to S-mesh on our little 6/4 manual that we print with.

Thanks again, guys!
-Andy

[Frog]

A belated howdy and welcome!

[tonyt79]

Very nice prints! Welcome

[Dottonedan]

For just getting started, you're doing very well. VERY. Someone has a good grasp of the basics in the halftone work. Of course, there are always areas with room for improvement in some areas, but in the best of each of ours we all can say that so, this is good. If I may speak Artist to Artist,and could make any suggestions, I might say, consider looking into fading the edges of some areas off to the shirt more. Really, for that as a starting point alone, it will make a big difference. You could eat away at some areas on the underbase alone or (more so) than the top colors. From there, it will come to you more and more with each print. For these designs, The only one I might apply that too, is the bottom ground/road work. Possibly the blue top thing as well in some areas. Just artist to artist comments. Looks great tho. Printing is also as great.


Nice work, congrats on that results and congrats on joining and thank you.

[andyandtobie]

Thanks, guys!  We appreciate the warm welcome.  Dan, thanks for the input.  I've been reading your posts for a long time and always find them interesting and informative.  When I separated the car wash job, I originally had halftones at the bottom, like you said, and on the right side of the building where that big blue area is, as well as a couple other spots.  When we printed it, we got really bad ugly fuzzies pulling up in those areas (fuzzies half-caked in white ink, of course, leaving gaps in the underbase) so I went back and made those areas solid.  But, obviously, that just dodged the problem instead of fixing it.  I wonder what I need to do to get the halftone underbase to print right?  Though when I took the halftones out I also bought a fresh, sharp squeegee and switched from 1/1 to 2/1 on the emulsion, so maybe I should go back and try again.  Should've stuck with the scientific method and changed one thing at a time, eh?  I was going to give up on halftones in the underbase, but you've convinced me to keep at it.  Thanks!

Also, I know this isn't the greatest art ever by any means, but if anyone has any questions about it (or anything else), I'll be happy to answer them.  It's the least we can do!  I draw the art on paper the old fashioned way and add the color with markers.  The lettering is added in Photoshop, so I went back and copied it from the film back onto the artwork using a florescent tube light box.  Our clients have loved getting the original artwork to frame and hang on the wall.  It's our secret trick to make us competitive versus other shops in town who actually know what they're doing!