Hello everyone! It’s the last week of the portfolio project and I have a big update for this final week. I’ve learned quite a lot from some major design mistakes I made this week. So let’s wrap this up!
To recap, my project consists of at least three completed t-shirts and a platform to sell them.
What I Produced
I made two completed shirts and rough sketches. Both of these designs were remakes of the art I did in high school 5-7 years ago. The one with the koi fish was originally a marker drawing I made in sophomore year and the Jesus one was a t-shirt design I done in senior year. Additionally, I drew a total of 15 different sketches for shirt ideas.
Also, I launched my online store through Society6 and I have to say this was the most exciting part of my project! I finally get to see my designs in action in the real world. You can take a look at my shop here.
My Workflow
I started off with some sketches to give myself direction and an idea of where to start. Then I watched some more Youtube videos on how to adjust the pressure sensitivity of the brush tool and how to create a glitch effect (actually this was done in Photoshop).
You can find my t-shirt tutorial playlist here.
After I scanned my koi fish sketches I dropped them into Illustrator and started off by adjusting the pressure of the brush tool. Doing this will cause the brush to respond to the amount of pressure I put on the Wacom stylus I used. That’s how I achieved a hand drawn brushstroke in the third picture.
It took a while to get the hang of the new pressure change in the brush tool because it’s very sensitive, more so than I anticipated, and I had to keep redrawing lines. I was surprised at how the slightest touch can cause a blob of digital paint to form. So think of it like one of those old-fashioned dip ink pens, you have to be careful in the amount of pressure you apply to it.
Basically I drew over my original drawings and combined different parts together. Then I used the ellipse tool to create a perfect circle. After that I fixed the scales so that the endpoints of each line doesn’t interfere with another line. Once I was finished drawing I created a mockup in Photoshop using a free template here.
The second design I had to work in Photoshop in order to create the glitch effect but everything else was done in Illustrator. The glitch was created by following one of the Youtube videos I watched. I also used the pen tool to cut out parts of a photo or in this case Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Then I created a clipping mask on the artwork so that it wouldn’t destroy the original file.
What I Learned
This last week of the project was a big learning experience for me. I conducted some market research by asking friends for their honest opinions and I posted a preview of my koi fish design on Instagram which was well received. However I made a mistake with the other design.
I was told that the DJ Jesus design was considered blasphemous. I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone but it was not my intention to incite trouble or controversy of any sort. My previous post also had a similar image, one which I made during my senior year of high school and I also apologize for that design as well. You can read my previous post here.
Despite working hours on this and learning new techniques on my Jesus design, I’ll have to cut my loss and move on. Furthermore, I wrote down a list of things to avoid when creating a shirt. This is by no means a comprehensive list of things I should avoid.
Other than that I learned some new tools like clipping masks, glitch effects, and the brush tool.
Preview of Next Week
Learning to design a t-shirt took more time than I had anticipated but I thoroughly enjoyed flexing my creative muscles again. The last time I made art like this was in senior year of high school and it feels fantastic getting inspired allover again. It’s a feeling I didn’t realize I had missed and I’ve noticed that creating art has improved my mental health. 10/10 would recommend this.
Although my project is officially over I’ll still work on marketing my small business and creating more shirts. I’ve definitely grew a lot this past month and at the start of this project I didn’t think I could accomplish a big goal like this. But breaking each week down into manageable daily goals helped me tremendously.