My friend Peter teased me about my wife being incredible, and me being her "crusty tagalong." (It's probably true.) The thing you have to understand about Peter is that when he finds a hook, he pulls on it, and pulls on it, and pulls on it. At first it's funny, then it's really funny, and then it starts to become annoying but he doesn't take too long to notice it, and he stops. Just a little past the funny stage.
Anyway, he thought it would be hilarious if I had a shirt that said "I'm her crusty tagalong" with an arrow pointing to the side. I thought of it differently. Like what if there was a shitty basement punk band we both loved in 1998 named The Crusty Tagalongs, and we both had bought shirts 30 years ago and were both holding onto them like they were the most important artifact of our lives.
So I'm going to print us both "The Crusty Tagalongs" band shirts.
The thing I hate about the design is that it's so clearly my work. If it were real, it would be so much more crusty and handmade. But like, I can't let go of clean lines, and it is stuck in this "better than an 8th grader but much worse than a real artist" position, with some well-defined lines and some not. And the clean lines don't make it look better....they just make it look like mine. I'm going to try to mess it up a little bit when I cut it so it doesn't look so clean but we all know I will struggle.
I've read that people have better success printing to garment with rubber blocks instead of linoleum, so I'm using a Blick rubber block this time. I did a little dicking around recently with Blick rubber blocks to make stamps, and it was not successful. I really struggled with the shitty Blick water-based ink, it got dry every single print, and I pressed the shit out of it which usually results in things sliding around with these rubber blocks. I'm planning to use the Blick garment oil-based ink this time, and I hope that works better. In general I just really feel sucky with ink.
Outcome
Learned along the way
I sanded the surface of the rubber Blick block before transferring. I think it helped, because I don't see as many weird "press" marks on the surface. But I couldn't get rid of them all.
I made some changes to the acetone transfer, based on the previous. I didn't go ridiculously heavy on the acetone, and I also used a roller to press it down after wetting it. The transfer was phenomenal compared to previous. It is possible that the surface made a difference, too. This is the transfer with a smidge of blue acrylic applied for carving visibility:
