Johnny Two Tone Club

CXXVI

It’s not you, it’s me. I’m really sorry, I’ve been meaning to write but… I’ve been really busy. Really I have… I’m not just saying that. I’ve been thinking about you a lot but have been too involved in my day job, which has also been becoming my night job a lot of late – one of the perils of working for yourself.

Before I forget I should probably mention to those of you that don’t follow our Facebook page that we finally opened our much-anticipated (by us) Etsy shop which has been ticking over nicely in the last couple of months. Almost everything we’ve done is available for sale at this point and we’d like to extend an enthusiastic high-5 to everyone who’s already bought some loot. You can find the link to the shop under ‘Store’ in links menu of our site.

So I haven’t had a chance to print anything lately but I have had the time to spend countless hours if not days trawling the internet for information on African flora & fauna, compelling sandwich photography, bike repair tutorials, and of course a bit of hand lettering. It was during this pilgrimage of procrastination that I managed to track down the work of Jon Contino, an artist whose work I’d been seeing pop up on various blogs over the last couple of years. Whether it’s his work with former design studio One Twenty Six, or his new work with his clothing company CXXVI Clothing Co. (126), this guy has the Midas touch in my opinion.

I’d been eagerly awaiting the relaunch of the CXXVI website as I’d been discovering illustrations from some of the shirts and when it launched 2 days ago I couldn’t have been more impressed. To top it all off it turns out that not only do they do super rad illustrations, but the prints are all hand pulled screen prints. Screen printing anything is enough to make me happy but telling me you hand pull your screens is like telling me: ‘I box without gloves’; ‘I bake cake without flour’; ‘I play banjo… with my mind’. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. Whilst screen printing will give your design a lot of punch, hand pulling your screens is fraught with equal shots of danger and reward as any number of unexpected things can happen on each pull. As CXXVI say on their site; ‘Each shirt is individually printed by hand making no two pieces alike’. The fact of the matter is that it’s a whole lot of fun to print stuff by hand and just see what you end up with.

I can’t wait to earn a few spare clams so I blow them on an order to these guys. You can check out more of the CXXVI Clothing Co. here.

One Twenty Six

CXXVI Clothing Co.

JTTC Library: Book 1

The Thames and Hudson Manual of Screen Printing (1979)

This book is a remainder from the Swinburne College Library. How they came to the decision that it should be chucked out, I can’t imagine, because it is an awesome wealth of insane knowledge.

Lots of beautiful information about different ways to join a frame, mesh density, registration … normal stuff like that … plus wonderful random information like “scratch n sniff” inks, flocking and silkscreening food. Rad!

Thames and Hudson Manual to Screen Printing

Eduardo Paolozzi Hooray!

Scratch n Sniff - hello!

mesh! exciting!

a nice excuse to flash a bit of flesh

win! Bridget Riley

Flocking genius

not a vegan method

Screening stuff other than paint

I’ve been noticing a lot of clever chickens lately who’ve been screening all sorts of stuff other than paint. It never would have occurred to me to put anything other than the finest (maybe not always the finest) paints through my precious screens but after seeing some of the inventive things that other folks have been doing, I’m starting to think again and brew all sorts of crazy ideas. Here’s a couple of projects from FPO and Eye Magazine that I’ve been digging in particular.

We Freak on My Jeep by Excuses Design Collective
In a nutshell, these guys basically exposed their image onto their screens, then screened glue through the silk, quickly washed it out their screens and then poured hundreds and thousands over the print to stick to the glue. They even screened the “Beep Beep” part separately in a gloss varnish.

Pretty amazing stuff.

Read the full article here.

Oil and Water do not mix by Anthony Burrill with Happiness Brussels
Mr Anthony Burrill marched himself down to the polluted beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana with bucket and spade and (easily) collected enough oil to use as a paint to screen these amazing posters.

Burrill comments: ‘There is a perception among many people that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is just going to somehow disappear … For people in the Gulf, including Louisiana, the effects of this disaster will be around for a long time.’

Read the full article here.

Lost in Space

Whilst working on our current project which is top secret so don’t ask me to tell you anything, I found myself developing a nostalgia for all things space retro and Sci-Fi. In particular I couldn’t stop thinking about Lost in Space (the original), Star Trek, and this really great comic I’ve been reading called Tales of the Fear Agent. I was so excited I couldn’t help myself, so in the spirit of inspired fan art I took pen to paper and drew up a little JTTC Sci-Fi scene.

Top secret space themed project to be revealed immanently padawan, I promise.

Just Because

How great are these self promotional posters by Because Studio?! We’re happy times are hard because we’d vote for fluoro and screen printed over gold foiled and embossed any day.