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“Invention of Color” is back in stock as a 2nd edition! Grab it while you can , or be uncool forever. Maybe!

Threadless Tee Design – “Invention of Colour” Reprinted

Ben on November 29th, 2011

 

I’ve finally got some artwork available for online purchase in a variety of forms, through two print-on-demand sites: Zazzle and Society6.

Zazzle tends to focus on an amazing variety of products and styles and the ability to customize items, so that’s the place to go if you want heaps of options and a good quality result. Society6 aims for even higher quality, on a narrower range of item types (especially art prints, including stretched canvases).

So far I’ve been impressed with both places, and not a week goes by without me cheering up my workspace with the Zazzle mug you can see in the picture (believe it or not, that smiley face design took as long to do as some of my fancier digital paintings!).




New Stores

Ben on November 16th, 2011

Astro-Not - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

Another bit of teamwork between myself and the thinker Evan Ferstenfeld. It may not be a scientifically accurate depiction of space exploration but I like it! It was fun to play with the idea of adding a glow ink to it as well. It was another good experience and I’m happy with the design, so let’s see what it’s future brings!

Threadless Collaboration – Astro-Not

Ben on August 29th, 2011

Closet full of classic villainsBe Afraid of the Dark - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

It’s finally here: a remake of the popular but unprinted “Do Not Enter”! After a lot more communication with the brain of Evan Ferstenfeld, the two-sided design has become one-sided, the level of scariness (and the number of characters) has been increased, and the colouring technique has been changed. We managed to get it done in time for the Threadless “Horror III” design challenge. Strangely enough, I’m not a fan of horror but it can be great source material for some silly shenanigans (does anyone else use the word ‘shenanigans’?)!

Big thanks to Reags for doing the Threadless submission’s Flash presentation!

Check out Evan’s online store.

Edit – I’ve removed the technical notes from the post and added a more detailed version to the tutorial section: Shirt design process.


Threadless Collaboration – Be Afraid of the Dark

Ben on July 10th, 2011

Loot Collector - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

A bit of geek humour for people who enjoy science fiction and fantasy. The initial idea was to parody those video game characters that can carry an impossibly large amount of items in their inventory but then I got a bit carried away myself! There were another couple of movies, tv series and video games I wanted to reference but couldn’t find a way to do it. Oh well, I had fun with the stuff I did manage to squeeze in! I did a pencil sketch for the character then did all the finished art in Photoshop.

Threadless Tee – Loot Collector

Ben on May 3rd, 2011

Frankentee - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

‘Life stuff’ has kept me away from art for a bit, but here’s something new at last! Threadless had a design challenge going, with the theme “Character”. The goal was to develop a fun character that could also be made into a costume. Unusually for me, my entry was done entirely digitally from sketch through to completion. I used Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Bamboo Fun, using the hard round brush.

Threadless Tee – Frankentee

Ben on December 18th, 2010

Threadless is advertising gift certificates, and using a character from my design “Invention of Colour” to do it! Unfortunately my design is all sold out, so at the moment you can’t actually use your gift certificate to order it! If you like it, though, you can go to the product page and request a reprint (look just under the “Add to Cart” button).

Edit 11 Feb 2012: It’ back in stock as a 2nd edition!

Invention of Colour Again!

Ben on December 1st, 2010

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These are my last two pieces of art for the Intense Titanium newsletter for the time being. Both pictures were done in Twistedbrush Open Studio at twice the resolution you see here. There’s a good chance I’ll be able to work with these folks in the future, but under their new name: Vurge Jewellery.

Intense Titanium

Ben on November 9th, 2010

This is either a deeply meaningful work describing through visual metaphor the complex nature of the human condition, or it’s a piece of silliness with no meaning to it whatsoever. You decide! This design was done in Photoshop, using a Wacom Bamboo Fun, and took too long. It was pretty fun, though!

Threadless Tee – Faceballs

Ben on October 6th, 2010

Stone-Cold Western - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

Months of doing just a few minutes here and there and a new design is finally done! The process started as digital sketches, then went to pencil sketches, then pen drawings, then colouring in Adobe Photoshop, then conversion to vectors with Vector Magic, then tweaking in Adobe Illustrator. I also received advice from friendly people at Threadless. You can see their comments, and different versions of the design, in the design critique.

<a href=”http://www.threadless.com/submission/300823/Stone_Cold_Western?streetteam=brainrust” title=”Stone-Cold Western – Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More”><img src=”http://www.threadless.com/subbanner/300823/banner1.png” width=”220″ height=”119″ border=”0″ alt=”Stone-Cold Western – Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More”/></a>

Threadless Tee – Stone-Cold Western

Ben on September 10th, 2010

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More art for the Intense Titanium website. The first and third pictures were done in Twistedbrush, while the second was drawn in pencil then coloured in Photoshop. I’m fortunate in having a bit of freedom in how I approach the pictures, although I still need to do them fairly quickly (about an hour from concept to upload, generally). So the first puts the priority on mood, the second on a joke, and the third on design.

Intense Titanium

Ben on June 14th, 2010

Digital painting of unusual mountain muster

My entry for Parka’s second contest: “Unusual Cowboys”. The standard of entries is already high, but the subjects (so far) are fun enough that it’s kind of like art playtime and winning is secondary! Follow the link and check out some of the other entries. There’s some good stuff there.

The process: I started with a pencil sketch of a lemon being chased on a desert plain with Monument Valley-style mountains in the background. After looking at some reference photos, I liked the mood of morning mountain musters so I switched to that, and red seemed to stand out better than yellow so the lemon became a tomato-like thing. For the final painting, I used a Wacom Bamboo Fun and hopped back and forth between Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Twistedbrush Open Studio.

Strange Mountain Muster