It’s been a challenging but rewarding month so far and I’ve made some big changes to my month-long t-shirt project. My original goal was to create 30 finished designs complete with t-shirt mockups, and open my own online store then market them through free outlets like Facebook and Instagram, and learn Adobe Illustrator from scratch.
However, I soon realized 30 designs in under a month, with no prior experience in Illustrator, was unrealistic. I emailed the education director of Praxis, T.K. Coleman, and he recommended to work on just one design and improve each week on it, then document every new technique used to improve the design. In short, he suggested to shift my focus to documenting everything I learned in Illustrator instead of centering my project around the quantity of shirts.
This was a sigh of relief for me because there was no way I could churn out a completely finished and aesthetically pleasing design every single day in less than 30 days. I’m fully capable of creating 30 shirts but I just need more time. Last week I found that it took more time to learn and use the tools in Illustrator and I so worried and stressed out because I was behind on my weekly goal of 10 shirts a week. Time was a big factor in my project and I had to consider the fact that I’m working two jobs with 12-13 hour workdays.
So now I’ve settled on creating at least three finished designs and writing down the steps it took for me to complete a shirt. I’ll also still sell them on a well-known platform.
I also scheduled an advising session with Hannah the advisor for Module 1. She was tremendously helpful in sorting out my struggles and I’m grateful for her valuable advice. I also had an informal Zoom meeting with three of my Praxis classmates and that was also incredibly helpful. We talked about our struggles and accomplishments with our projects and helped each other workshop the problems we’ve run into. They suggested to me that I create more rough sketches and ideas for t-shirts and post it in my blog that way I’ll reach my original goal of 30 but in a different way.
If you ever struggle with something in your life find someone to talk to it’s more helpful and productive than you think. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Use your resources and talk to an experienced person who has helped others in your position. This advice doesn’t just apply to your professional life but emotional well-being too.
Even though 30 t-shirts was too much it served as a starting point, a way for me to figure out what I’m capable of in a specific timeframe because without a concrete number it’s difficult to determine goals. Think of it as a rough guideline to follow and then whittling it down to a feasible goal.
Here is what I accomplished this week.
What Did I Produce?
I created another design and then used Photoshop to create a mockup with a few different t-shirt colors. I did the same for last week’s design too. For the first design I was inspired by the half moon I had seen a few weeks ago and I have never seen it at such an angle before.
The second design with the power lines and birds also has a minimalist inspired look. If you look closely I’ve hidden something in there.
My Workflow
I started off with watching Youtube tutorials about new tools I used which were the knife and smooth tools. I also created a playlist on Youtube of all the tutorials that I thought were the most helpful to me. You can watch it here. Then I sketched out a few ideas on how I wanted my design to look.
After that I created a new document in Illustrator, then searched Google for photos of power lines and birds sitting on them, and started drawing over the photos with the pen tool. I was also careful to keep each photo and drawing as a separate layer by itself otherwise it’ll meld together. I went further by making every line and bird a separate layer too because I ran into an issue with the fuses (the part where the power lines start) because I needed to cut a section out so that I could duplicate it. But it was more difficult to do so because I didn’t realize I should’ve drawn each fuse separately. So I learned to use the knife tool to cut out sections of the drawing.
I came up with a few more sketches of how I wanted the power lines to look but I wasn’t satisfied with all but one since it felt a bit stagnate and uninteresting.
Once I felt pleased with my final drawing I found a t-shirt mockup on Pixelify and dropped it into Photoshop. You can find the one I used here.
What I Learned So Far
The Youtube videos I learned from this week were how to use the knife tool, pen tool, and how to create a t-shirt mockup. I also learned how to change the shirt color in Photoshop.
Preview of Next Week
This is an old design I did in high school and I’ve decided to give it an updated look. I made it in Photoshop so I’ll use Illustrator instead.
