The Art of Making Your Art work on a T-Shirt

2012-01-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

This is what we do to make art look good on a shirt. It's taking a design and breaking it apart into individual colors and then combining them together to re-build a composite of the original image. Each of these are made into a screen, then set up and printed by a screen printing press on to a T-shirt.

The following images is a demonstration of the process to give you an idea of the steps that a design goes through to be applied to a T-shirt.

Click the image to see a bigger picture.

This is the original art supplied by the customer to be

printed on a black shirt.

First, we break apart the design into colors that we know

when blended together on the press will make the design

come together when it is finished.

The first color to go down on a black shirt is the base white,

which is flash dried on the press before the other colors are

printed. This is needed to simulate a white background for

the more transparent colors to show. Without this you would

not see the design.

The next color is a red shade orange. the design on the

left is there to simulate how the shirt will print on the press.

The one on the right is the film positive that is "Burned"

on to the screen.

The next color is blue. There are different contrasts to the

blue and this is created by the light and dark areas of

the base, where some of the black shirt will come through.

Yes. Almost rocket science!

Then yellow is printed to blend with orange for different

shades.

Sometimes a grey is made with blends of black and whites.

This design has quite a bit and requires a color to be dedicated

to make it perfect.

Next is the highlight white. This blends in to smooth colors and to

strengthen the white areas of the design.

The last color is black. This color is to sharpen the details

that weaken during the printing process with the other colors.

The final image is the actual print on the shirt to show

the final payola of all the hard work that goes into

making a great T-shirt!

Sunline Art Updates

2012-01-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a few designs created this week at Sunline Products. Duane Eaves is the newest artist on the Sunline team and a few of these are his creations.

Look for more new designs in the next couple of weeks!