My latest is up, go vote now! Thank you!

My newest submission is up, so go vote!

I went to school and studied in the "fine art" program. There was constant pressure to make what they call high art. I went through the program for five years and I still have no idea what that means. Now I have an extremely jaded view of the art world and I haven't touched a paint brush since I graduated, but that's a different story I guess. What I found was that we were all really bad illustrators. We were suppose to pick a concept and paint about it. Because if you couldn't talk about your painting in critique and have some meaning behind it then it wasn't a good painting. Problem was in an attempt to make "high art" the product would come out so convoluted and cluttered with garbage that no one could possible ever really figure out what the hell it was suppose to be.

So, jaded and depressed, I met some people from the graphic design department and discovered I really liked them a lot better. They were down to earth and easy to talk to, and their sketch books were filled with doodles that looked a lot more like the kind of stuff I did in secret that my painting friends weren't ever suppose to know about because it was a shameful act of betrayal. So now out of school I draw for the sake of drawing and enjoy it, and I'm working on becoming an illustrator of children's books and maybe I'll do a few album covers here and there. That would keep me pretty happy. Though I've started to find a few clinches in the graphics art field too. Like the trends kind of bother me. I've noticed it a lot lately and it seems like everything's starting to look the same lately. The little ghosty shaped things in particular are completely on my nerves. They are everywhere and they're completely unoriginal and becoming less and less creative by the millisecond. I guess that's just the nature of the business though. This field has an extremely wide range of talent, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So when someone really hits on something out of this world awesome, everybody else wants in on the profits. The good thing is, there's enough really good talent out there to save us from overwhelming bad trends and they come up with great stuff that's always original and refreshing and it keeps the whole process going, and the market moving. I don't think I'm one of those people but I hope I can learn a lot from them, and maybe I'll be up there with that caliber of ideas and work someday. I think I just need some time to set my mind straight after art school, there's still a lot of tired old bullshit sitting in the attic that needs to get cleaned out before I can have fresh, uninhibited ideas again.

Thanks for listening to my blurb of the day.

Since my recent submission:


Go vote!

I've noticed a lot more flash submssions, and they pretty much all have better image quality than mine.

First I tried compressed .jpg, but those were too big, so then I used .gifs. Those were better, but I had to completely can one of the slides, and then my models were sacrificed for the sake of the design slide. How in the heck are you guys getting your flash files under 250 kb and maintaining image quality, even for 3 slides instead of just two?

I am but a padiwan in Flash design, theach me the ways of the Flash. *bows down to your great awesomeness*

There's been a ton of great art this week! Congrats everybody, and good luck. So many shirts I want to get printed....

So I go to a university and I've got a piece in one of the student art shows at the university. I'm graduating on the 10th and I don't plan on ever coming back here again voluntarily. The university, for losers like me who still live in a dorm room, closes at 5 pm on Friday. My graduation is at 9 am on Saturday, and the art gallery is not closing the show until 5 pm on Saturday. I will not be here at 5 pm on Saturday.

So I go to see if I can pick up my piece early after my graduation ceremony. They finally find it in the goodness of their hearts to let me take my work down at 1 pm. But on the way out the door I get, "Don't ever do that to a professional gallery or they'll never let you show there again." Like I'm a two year old and I don't know any better. So now I guess I'm on their shit list, and they know my name and who I am so the chances of me getting a show as an alumni are probably null and void now because they hate me for being "unprofessional" even though the university closes Friday and no one is going to be in the gallery on Saturday. Am I in the wrong here? They just assume everyone has a car and an apartment and that we're going to stay up here for nearly a week after graduation to wait around and pick up our artwork?

Enough already with the resubs! That's what the critique section is for. I'm getting annoyed with voting on the same things over and over and over again. I've seen at least 3 resubs today alone, not to mention all the others I've seen this week, and guess what? So far, I've given every single one of them the same score as the first time they were subbed. So stop already! Build a bridge and get over it, make something new.

I'm just wondering, since I'm new, how many weeks behind is Threadless picking designs from? Because I've never seen any of the designs that won for this week before in the scoring section. I understand it takes a while to get designs through pre-press and printed and stuff, just how long? Month two months? I'm really hoping to see some of my favorites from the past few weeks in print sometime in the near future.

There are so many posts on the bogs that I have no idea if this has been posted before... Since I'm totally broke at the moment I vote for a wish list feature for Threadless. That way I can keep track of tees I really like and go back and buy them later or vote for them to be reprinted.

Who's with me?

Why are T-shirts great? Because wearing a T-Shirt is like wearing a piece of your personality. Things you care about, aspects of your personality, places you've been, things you've done. Wearing a T-shirt says," This is what I am take it or leave it." Wearing a t-shirt is bold. You're putting out there something about yourself for other's to like or dislike; that has the potential to be ridiculed. T-shirts have private significance to the wearer, especially when it comes down to your favorites or old standbys, that is being publicly displayed. Wearers of t-shirts are brave, confident individuals. Thank you. Thank you for going there.

Be Bold! Wear your personality on your sleeve! ...Or your chest, or your back, or...