Thursday, June 18, 2009

Blast from the Past #193: Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

Back in 1983, my writer wife had the opportunity to attend the renowned Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. Around this time, Kevin and I had discovered the copy shop in Portsmouth, NH had that newfangled color copier which could print color artwork onto transfers which could then be ironed onto t-shirts. So I decided to make Jeannine a custom t-shirt for the conference.

Here's the black and white art...



... and here's the color, reversed so that when the iron-on was applied it would read in the right direction.



You might note some odd glare in this image -- that's because I had used a piece of clear acetate over the drawing on which I could apply the dot pattern screen used for the background. I did this because it allowed me to remove the pattern at will if desired, and also because it was easier cutting that stuff on acetate than on paper (paper would often tear in places when pulling up the excess adhesive-backed pattern film.

If memory serves, my wife got a kick out of the design and wore the t-shirt until the iron-on faded -- sadly, that didn't take too long (the quality and durability of those things was very variable). -- PL

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow what a really nice shirt lol. I like the cartoon bread typing away. It always sucks when a shirt transfer start to peel away, i use to have the marvel comics ecko shirts that had nice transfers of old comic covers and within a month they just started flaking off... sigh ... still nice tho!!

Newton Gimmick said...

That's pretty hilarious. I can imagine that it would be a lot of fun to have that kind of artistic talent.

I'm always amused when you post up something that you've given a family member or used as a card, etc, based on your drawings. I love the idea that you could just whip up a cool t-shirt design on a whim.

Neat stuff.

Brookslyn said...

Your non TMNT related work is always interesting to see. But, bringing it back to TMNT. I saw this interesting comic in the store today that had a format (size) similar to the first few magazine sized TMNT issues. The comic is called VIKING from image comics. It's 24 pages with no ads and a cool "shiny/matte" cover. The paper is also the non-shiny type of paper. Do you think that TMNT could adopt this format for the next volume? As a kid I always liked how the first few issues of TMNT were "larger/different" in size that the mainstream marvel/dc comics. Made them even cooler. Oh yeah, you could even hire the writer/artist, they seem to have an interesting mixed style. Anyway, I hope you check it out.

~ tOkKa said...

-->> .. vintage and modern t-shirt designs can last beyond their expected ' fading ' .

Woolight and handwashing or gentle cycle and light, fluff in the dryer or just air drying will make them last an exceedingly long time.

Dryer on regular cycle is the real killer for those designs. Deadly for vintage prints.

Modern printing techniques at the print shop are a little better, but you still need to add caution in care with cleaning them.

Hand washing is pretty key for me.

Bookgal said...

There is something very Douglas Adams in this image...I can almost see the cow that wants to be eaten sitting on the other side. :P

David said...

It doesn't look like a loaf of bread. It looks like something completely different.

Vaughn Michael said...

I think this may be by far the strangest thing I've ever seen and yes this is coming from a a huge Muppet & TMNT fan lol!
-Vaughn M.

Andrew NDB said...

I admit, like David, a loaf of bread isn't the first thing that popped into my head when I saw that image. Maybe it's the coloring. :)