Thought I'd share a little gallery of photos I'd previously taken and posted on Instagram. I usually just post art on Instagram, but sometimes you just come across something interesting and want to capture or document it.

[gallery type="square" size="medium" ids="3490,3491,3492,3493,3494,3495,3496,3497,3498,3499,3500,3501,3502,3503"]

Thought I'd share a little gallery of photos I'd previously taken and posted on Instagram. I usually just post art on Instagram, but sometimes you just come across something interesting and want to capture or document it.

[gallery type="square" size="medium" ids="3469,3470,3471,3472,3473,3474,3475,3476,3477,3478,3479,3480,3481,3482,3483,3484,3485,3486,3487"]

Most designs you find at local retailers are boring, ordinary, common or look cheap and tacky- especially this recent craze for rectangle prints on the fronts of t-shirts which look like an uninspiring ink-jet transfer paper job. A design on shirts, any other clothing, or even tattoos on skin need to be placed properly. A top-heavy shirt with a design covering just the shoulders and chest or an a-symmetric piece of artwork can look great, but most companies just churn out the same, basic, small to medium sized square or round design slapped in the centre with no consideration to flow, composition or just trying to do something a bit different.

Recently I designed a full-print shirt with one of my doodle-mech designs after stumbling upon a UK company who can process full-coverage 'dye sublimation' shirts at small quantities. Check out www.sublab.co.uk for more info. I designed the shirt to fit the provided template, then sent it back as a PSD Photoshop file. Wanted a dark purple tee with contrasting orange for a while, so here's my opportunity to get one :)

There was no mention of shirt dimensions other than chest size on site at the time, so did a little research for "American apparel t-shirt" to get a fairly good idea of the size I'd need. Being 6'1" male, with a 40" chest and 35" waist, I went for a medium and it fit pretty well. Some sizes hinted at a large being more appropriate for me. Although I prefer a slightly tighter fit, so wonder if a 'small' (described as a 34-36" chest size) would have looked better on my frame? I wondered if it would be possible to find and supply your own shirts for printing to guarantee a better fit? If spending over £30 for a t-shirt, you'd hope for it to fit well as well as look good.

The design came out very nicely with colours nearly as vibrant as my RGB computer screen. Tonal contrast was lacking a touch in certain areas, which is worth taking into consideration when designing my next shirt. There wasn't enough contrast with the subtle greys on the inside neck logo, so would also look to make that darker for next time. Very fine lines don't show up so well- keeping things a little bigger and bolder is the way to go.

The biggest problem was the inevitable white creases around the seams and armpit areas. Patches, nooks and crannies where the print doesn't reach. I knew there would be a strong possibility of this happening and they looked pretty bad if the arms were raised. I manually filled these areas with a black Sharpie, which over time fades out to a grey tone. Took some effort but now looks A LOT better than it did upon arrival, and probably not noticeable unless pointed out. I'm hoping it'll hold up in the wash. I may need to try other permanent ink or fabric markers if not.

I like the idea of selling full front and back print shirt designs, but with my mark-up on top, I'm not sure people would be willing to pay £40-£50 for a single t-shirt? It may not be everyone's cup of tea, so for now I'll continue to create my own custom shirts from time to time for personal use and leave it at that. Many thanks to Sublab for providing the opportunity to try this. The shirt looks awesome!

Apologies for the poor photo quality of on my phone, but you get the idea :)

Including some extensive chip an scuff repair, I gave my RX8 an extensive deep clean and detail which in total totted up to around 40 hours! Most of that was down to removing thousands of tiny black specks from the paintwork. Still not sure if it was tar, tree sap, break dust or carbon dust from the exhaust, but it was a time consuming pain to get rid of them all. Hopefully if I keep it regularly shampooed and waxed it's not going to need so much attention in the future.

Full detail consisted of~

Alloy Kerbing Repair:
- Sand
- Primer
- Sand
- Primer
- Paint
- Blend
- Paint

Stone Chips Repair:
- Chipex Tri-coat

Exterior Clean:
- Pressure Wash
- Fallout Remover
- Shampoo
- Rinse Wash
- Claybar+ Detailer

Polish:
- Resin Polish
- Gloss Sealant
- Wax Layer

Extras:
- Tyres- Black
- Plastics- Black
- Chrome Clean
- Glass Polish

Interior Clean:
- Hoover Floor, boot etc
- Seat & Side Panels
- Leather
- Gloss Plastics
- Matt Plastics
- Glass

Results:

There was a nice sun set while I was driving along so I pulled over into a nearby lane and took these with my HTC One phone. Not ideal, but with a few Photoshop contrast adjustments, they'll do :)

It's my RX8's 5th birthday in a couple of months time and decided to make it a little prettier by fixing dozens of chips, scuffs and giving it a thorough clean [in progress].

This is one of the more noticeable bodywork scuffs. I fixed up around 30-35 other small chips.

Repaired using the Chipex system. An ok result.

After adding some primer with a brush and a bottle of touch up paint off of eBay for £6 for the wheels, I used some of the Chipex blending solution to help level it out.

These were pretty badly curbed in places so needed a little sanding before repainting. These photos are taken after sanding and priming with the primer filling in some of the curbing gaps.

I'd say these repairs are only 85% perfect, but to professionally recondition and spray the wheels alone might set me back £200-£300 so more than adequate for an interim fix up job and perhaps have them fully restored to perfection by a pro in a few years time.

Waiting until they create a smart phone with enough capacity to house my music collection. In the mean time I've got several thousand ID3 tags to update >_<

Tried some pumpkin carving of Devilman (from Go Nagai's manga). Happy Halloween ^_^

I've been privately blogging for years and occasionally I'll blog to the public via my personal site or social media sites. I wanted to create a Blog network through the same UI instead of having to log into OM, Wordpress and Blogger separately. And also wanted to have a primary master Blog which re-posts to social media sites to save potentially posting the same info on multiple platforms to different audiences.

I'm getting there!

I've set up Wordpress Multi-site, installed a few plugins which should do the trick and added some basic customization to my private and public blogs. Now I am trying to figure out what to post and to where- should I keep things fairly general, allow more personal posts to be shared, or just share art related things? And should I re-post everything on this master blog to my Facebook, Twitter and Tumbr?

I've never got on 100% with social media. Partly because I don't have the time to update them all, partly because I don't like the idea of making all my thoughts or interactions public. Now that so many people communicate this way and since I have a handful of friends and followers who use these sites, I want them to know what's going on in my world. I also want an audience- people interested in checking out what I have to share, say and show.

I'm also wondering if I should create a separate domain for the master blog- is it worth it right now? Can I easily migrate this to a new domain or server location at a later date if needs be? - I need to figure that out. Rather than this be part of Organic Metal, I like the idea of having a new, separate, simple site just for the Blog with a few extra add on pages to house permanent info and picture gallery. Then again, I also like the idea of creating a new professional portfolio site and not sure if a personal blog would belong on it?

[gallery]

I’m having a serious de-clutter session at home and managed to get a great price for my Microman Toys (mentioned a few entries back), and also sold a Rurouni Kenshin Art book. I’ve got plenty more bits and pieces to shift in due course

[gallery]

I’m now selling both my Microman and Microlady on eBay. Would definitely recommend buying a Microman for drawing reference. Beats those crappy wooden manikins hands down!