Owning a couple of T shirts with designs printed on the sleeves I was interested to learn how / if I could screen print down a sleeve myself. A couple of my favorite clothing brands do this and I figured that if I print fashionable things down the sleeves then hopefully people will buy them. This was also an opportunity to add to the design.
Mike from the print studio warned me at first that this was tricky to screen print as it must be very accurately vertical and in line with the seem of the shirt, otherwise mistakes are very obvious. I cut many different sized card inserts to put down the sleeve. Mike explained that this would be necessary to hold the fabric taught to apply the ink and that this also prevents bleeding through to the other side of the cotton. Yes - sleeve printing is quite possible but will test my skills.
Finalising the design I decided to use more consistent angles with cleaner and larger shapes to match the boldness of the panther head. The style of the body and head are very different, however I feel they work well together and somehow link rather pleasingly as a design, perhaps it is the angles and straight edges contrasting well with the smooth curves and details of the head. All is brought together with the use of the bold consistent black.
Having printed the positives I'm excited to physically get the panther onto a shirt. I think the main back panther design has a loose upside down triangle shape that will work well in the space. The sleeve design dags are also exciting, being a reference between the basic shapes of my work and decoration often used by tattoo artists to edge flash sheets. I think the finished shirt could work quite well in question to my brief also - 'I rely on shape as do tattoo artists' is the basic answer that I've got so far.
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