T-Shirt Design Portfolio

Here’s a few favorites from the thousands of t-shirt designs I’ve made in the past few years.

post

Slurpee Crusader

Slurpee 96dpi

I recently unearthed this pencil sketch I did for my first mural that I painted with my friend, Matthew Beasley. The mural was at Pablo’s, a music venue on Trade Street in Winston-Salem, NC. Sadly, it’s been lost to the ages… painted over before I got a good photo of it. This Slurpee™ drinking, levitating, four-necked sitar playing guru floated above a mountaintop covered in tree roots with a multi-sunned sunset/sunrise sky in the background. Good times!

post

Blue Plate Special

blueplate-special

The Mermaid Serena lies on a blue plate alongside buttered peas, tater tots, a biscuit, a basket of hush puppies, and a fine lagered ale. This painting was part of the Bawdy Broads Show during Heavy Rebel 2012 at Dye Pretty Salon.

post

Stingrays

StingraysI just recently unearthed this photo of one of my all-time favorites of my own paintings, “Stingrays.” It’s roughly 2’x3′ and loaded with surreal features like crop circles, a shipwreck, cave paintings, and aquatic wildlife flying through the sky. I rarely frame paintings, but I made this bulky, textured red and black frame to contrast with the pastel, dreamy feel of the overall painting.

 

post

Prismatic Sky Burial

Prismatic Sky Burial is a painting depicting the odd beauty of a vulture; nature’s cleanup crew. The prismatic glistening of black feathers is caused by micro structural features as they interact with sunlight.  The term “sky burial” comes from the Tibetan buddhist practice of allowing vultures to feed on the dead, returning physical matter to the great cyclical oneness of nature.

Textured and metallic acrylic on 12 x 24″ wood panel. $300.00 USD

Palenque: Ancient Astronaut T-Shirt Design

palenque_tshirt_adNow available in the Parallax Arts GiftShop on CafePress! This Mayan stone carving seems to depict an astronaut in the cockpit of an ancient craft designed for space travel, surrounded by symbols representing interdimensional beings and distant planets. I used Photoshop to optimize a photo of the carving and Illustrator to stylize and accentuate the carved symbols. Available in assorted shirt colors. $25.99 +S&H

post

Wood Block Sculptures

Raw Blocks

Raw Materials: Pallet wood.


“A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.” -Ancient Chinese Proverb


I made this ongoing series of wood block scultpures in light of this proverb and also (no pun intended, really) to get through a creative block. I designed these wood block sculptures with respect to the negative space between the blocks and really enjoyed the process of sanding individual pieces and shaping the overall finished work into something I was excited to paint and finish. I experimented with a lot of different ways of painting the pieces and finishing them. Some have paintings on the inside of them and some have hidden, unexpected details.

They were intended to mimic stained glass; the way the leading and glass interplay with each other as foreground and background, I set the glued-on wood blocks to interplay with the space around and between each other. I also enjoy the metaphorical idea that individual pieces make up the whole.

In doing these painted sculptures, I was searching for a new method of self-expression/information sharing. The prospect of fitting more surface area into a painting could mean more information shared. There is a large amount of personal memories encased in these pieces. I remember some of the songs or podcast I was listening to at the moment I was sanding a certain part, or a life event that was going on when I was layering washes of paint to achieve a certain look. All of this is very cerebral and only relevant to me. The majority of these pieces were made as a means of meditation.

post

Channel One Magazine: Issue #1

Channel One Magazine came from the age of toner, sharpies and white out.

In 1997, I worked at a local copy center and I had recently finished with graphic design school. My head was full of a collage of subjects I aspired to use for creative expression: creative writing, illustration, photography, and desktop publishing. I was really into fringe culture and the arts community of Winston-Salem, specifically people who frequented the original Morning Dew Coffee Shop on Burke Street, run by Steve and Ginny. It was a small community of the downtown area’s creative people and a place where I found myself spending a lot of time as I traded one past life for a newer one. I wanted to be a part of that community and help promote it. All of this translated into starting a zine; a cultural phenomenon that for the most part, has been replaced by the modern day blog.

I’ve scanned the original folded, pasted, and taped-together master copy pages I used to make the first issue. I appreciate the contributions of all who were involved in making it happen and I hope it will be well-received by them as the time capsule it is.

“Cat Got Your Tongue?” Painting

I painted this one for my brother as a gift. It’s the punchline to one of our favorite childhood cartoons, “Symphony in Slang” directed by Tex Avery. Below is the original cartoon:

catgottongue

Symphony in Slang