It had been quite a long time since I submitted a design to a Shirt.Woot Derby. I wanted to make a design worthy of a spectacular return.

I had started sketching here and there in my sketch book again. I wasn’t purposefully trying to make an illustration or design for anything in particular. After several things were translated from my mind to the paper I decided I’d look into the derby once again. The current theme was Derby #98: Famous Quotations Illustrated, but I really had no idea what I wanted to do. After searching around, I chose a quote from Michelangelo, “Paint with your head, not with your hands.”

I sat down and began sketching again. This was going to be a design for myself, a self portrait, and I set to it. I enjoy drawing characters that don’t have a story, but tell a story and relate imagery and subjects within a piece. The idea for this creation was to relate myself to my thoughts and the process I use to produce my art and, of course, match the quote I had chosen.

Original sketch for the design

I really took my time with this one. Usually I am in a hurry to get a design or illustration finished so that I may submit it at the start of a derby. With this one, however, I took several days to complete it. It was my goal to produce something of quality, instead of being part of the rat race.

Photo used for painting reference

Ultimately, I finished the design and submitted it to the derby on June 7, 2009. A few days late to the start of the derby, Paint With Your Head, Not With Your Hands received a warm welcome and finished with 235 votes, placing 14th.

Detail of line quality and halftones.

Honorable Mention

The original submission did not place to print, but it did receive an honorable mention from the Shirt.Woot staff, thus making it eligible for the 6th Double-Take Derby, Shirt.Woot Derby #106. The second running of the design failed to reach the audience as I was hoping it would and ended placing 57th with 138 votes.

Threadless Attempt

I don’t typically submit designs to Threadless, but against my better judgment I decided to give it a try. On November 6, 2009, I submitted the Paint with your mind, not with your hands to the Threadless hordes for scoring. It ended its run with 1.9 our of 5. I can’t make excuses for the performance of the design, but lets just say the Threadless crowd is a tough one.

Scored 1.9 out of 5

Worklog