sma

I have just registered. I am researching the t-shirt business for my 18 year old son. He is very artistic and we want to try selling his art on t-shirts but don't know how to start. How do we get his sketches/drawings on t-shirts. We do not have a computer right now; using my sisters. We want to start with a few t-shirts to sell to his friends and family and than go from there.

We can go to a local sreen printing company but what do we need to take? How does his art get from paper to t-shirt.

thanks

 

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LLclothingCo

The best thing to do is seperate the artwork yourself. #1 this saves alot of time and money for you and the silkscreen shop. #2 Doing color seperations is fairly easy and there is alot of help out there. Nowadays everything comes with instructions. I recomend going to SmartFlix, the Web's Biggest How-To DVD Rental Store. Its a "how to" dvd online rental site like netflix. U can find numerous dvds on silkscreening and artwork. All you have to do is your homework. This is where your son can learn to do research if hes truely passionate about doing this. If you leave the art speration part to the silkscreen shop they will most likely charge u an art fee usually around 50 bucks give or take, and also take longer to print your shirts because they must bother fixing your graphics. There are also photoshop plugins (i.e. fastfilms) that will do the seperations for you instantly however they are not free.If you have the artwork ready on film they can have your shirts in no time. If you dont have time on your side, then u should try the fastfilm trial verision for a few days. If you do have time, then learn yourself and start saving.
First step of the process is to get the artwork into the computer by using a scanner. Then on photoshop and/or illustrator, you resize, vectorize, and sperate the colors. The complexity all depends on how many colors your design is and also if you use dark color shirts. Always scan at high resolution and save as .tif instead of jpg. Avoid jpegs if u can.
After you seperate the artwork you print it to transparency film or vellum paper. One you have your art on the film, the silkscreen shop can take it from there. Its always best to keep the film if you are doing your own clothing line. You do not want to give others the tempation and ability to print your art behind your back. Ive seen it before!!! ugly situation.
Heres an example of a seperation i did a while back. it was a drawing that i scanned first. then i open vectorized it on illustrator. Hope any of this info helps or inspires you. ive been a graphic artist for 3 years barely and ive done hundreds of jobs. email me if u have any questions. id love to help others. <br>

 

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