I've been lurking here for a while. I think this forum is super cool and has a lot of valuable information.
Here's a little bit about me:
I was first introduced to screen printing in a serigraphy class in college where I was an art major. We made fine art prints using cut paper stencils, painting blockout directly onto the screen and using photo emulsion. Shortly after that, I worked as an airbrush artist on weekends for a screen printer. We traveled around to car shows and beach music festivals painting shirts. That was a great gig in the mid '80s for a college kid. Occasionally I would help him in the shop where I learned more about t-shirt printing. During this time, I also worked for a sign shop, this was back when signs were painted by hand. I found that experience to be very good as well.
After I graduated from college, I took a job as a staff artist for a decent sized screen print operation with multiple retail locations. Our main market was team sports from rec league to high school and college. This was a high-volume design job which was challenging; however, it provided me with valuable experience since I did everything from artwork to making screens to repairing dryers.
After a year, my illustration work had picked up enough that I could leave the screen print job and focus full-time on medical illustration. For the next few years, I illustrated surgical procedures for malpractice defense. A few years into working on my own I had the opportunity to start a screen print shop as a side project.
In the beginning, I did the artwork and made screens with employees doing most of the printing. After having employees for a period of time, I realized that I could make more money with less headaches by doing it all myself.
It was during this period in the mid 90s that the market for the illustrations I had been doing dried up as cd-roms became available with loads of ready to use illustrations on cd.
I also found that, while my ability to render body parts was very good, my faces needed work. I began to take classes in portrait painting from a couple of well known NY artists. One of the artists I worked with told me that if I really wanted to be a great artist, I needed to go to Italy to study. He made the connection for me to get into a summer program studying renaissance materials and techniques. I made three trips to Italy to study and learned a great deal.
Over the years, I have had a good number of solo gallery exhibits of my paintings. For a period of time, I considered myself a fine artist. Some of my more fine art friends tend to look down on my screen printing as "commercial" work and without value artistically. I went through a phase where I saw screen printing as only a revenue stream, not an artistic endeavor. More recently I have come to realize that I am just an artist working in a variety of media. Printing t-shirts is one of those, and I have the ability to make it more or less significant. I have come to embrace that I am a t-shirt guy.
I use Illustrator and Photoshop with the Wilflex EasyArt plugin to make halftones.
My film is output with an Epson R1800
One of the best decisions I made when I started my shop was to go with Newman Rollers from the beginning.
I coat with QTX, the Nazdar version, which takes about 45 secs on 230s with my homemade expo unit .
My meshes range from 80-230. I'm thinking about adding something bigger for glitter.
Currently I'm using a 4/4 Antec, the older model, with a flash when needed and electric dryer.
