Happy Birthday to Me!

I started my journey as an artist submitting to Threadless in the late 2000s, per the encouragment of a friend of mine who was active on the platform.

After submitting for a few years, participating in a variety community challenges, I finally land a sought after "print" and also made some great connections and friends along the way through social media and Threadless meetups at their old Chicago warehouse location.

Threadless lead the way for the Print-on-demand option for artist and creators like myself, and I began to submit my work on site like Redbubble and Society6.

The paradigm on these sites was nice, just post and hope someone buys. No voting process or community involvment to get a print. You don't make as much as the lump sum Threadless payout at the time, but it was nice to have a place to have your ideas validated by sales and followers.

After a decade of creating works for not only Threadless, but then Society6, Redbubble and then eventually Design By Humans and TeePublic, I wanted to share a few of my favorite works!

By the way, at the time of writing this, I was on vacation and decided to take the whole weekend to celebrate!

(My birthday was actually Friday, but hey.)

Anyway, here's a few of my favorites:

1. The Circusbot

Created in Late June of 2010.

Not really sure where this piece came from other than really wanting to win the “Threadwars” competition on Threadless that prompted this piece. I believe the prompt for the particular round of the competition was “the circus”, and some way, some how I came up with this wondrous work.

The original work was a pen and ink drawing on bristol board that I scanned with my large format scanner. After scanned I knocked out the background to isolate the line art, applied the colors and halftones.

Check out the Circusbot Here!

2. Nature Walk

Created in the Summer of 2012.

Living in Chicago at the time and being a life long Bears fan, Bears, the team and the actual animal, are always on the brain. So I said, why not draw a bear with a pine forest on its back?

This work was created with my stylus, back when I was rocking the entry level Wacom gear that I had some help buying with money from my Aunt.

Check out the Nature Walk Here!

3. Captain Pancake

Created in the Spring of 2015.

Captain Pancake is another one of my designs that I'm not really sure where it came from but I said down one day and pen and inked him out of the ether and he's been a pretty big hit!

I created the Captain with pen and ink, like I said, and added colors in Photoshop. His look is the basis for all of my subsequent designs of the Cap.

Check out Captain Pancake Here!

4. Bad Day Log

Created in the Spring of 2014.

Bad Day Log was one of my first designs that got picked up by a tee company for an ongoing print!

For whatever reason a little stump of a log as been my art muse and I thought to give it a really bad day, and this particular one is ablaze with little embers floating up into the sky.

This was also one of my more complicated pieces at the time, using open ended embers, halftones and flames.

This, according to my data, is the 69th work I've created since starting my PBD adventure. NICE.

Check out Bad Day Log Here!

5. Chicago Dog

Created in the Summer of 2010.

The Chicago Dog is one of my most popular works inspired by my love of Chicago, Chicago-style dogs, and dachshunds.

At one time, this design was sold by Chicago's “The Alley” and I got to visit their office and meet their owner.

To promote the work, they had some of the bus stop benches with the design on it. I would also periodically run into people wearing it when I worked downtown.

According to my data, this is my 23rd design. Which is also a great Chicago number!

Check out The Chicago Dog Here!

And that's a wrap! Thanks for checking out my favorites and reading up on how the became to be! See you in the next one!