Expert: Ellen Choate - 11/7/2006

Question
My brother and I are "natural" artist/self-taugh and have begun to move in that direction as a career. We've been teaching ourselves how to tattoo as well as airbrushing... The stuff we do is better looking than what we see at shops and in the malls, but we're pretty sure it's because we stencil everything and free-hand nothing on the final product (clothing in this case). Can you give some pointers on short-cuts without lessening the quality of the piece? Thanks

Answer
I know what you're asking; I'm not sure how much I can help here. I'm afraid it's not going to be a short answer!
I went through an 'artistic phase' where I stenciled a lot to save time.  It does help produce a uniform product.  As I grew in skill, though, I found it faster with most things to just go.  You get more creativity, more individuality and in my opinion, a better end result.  Less "amusement-parky", in other words.  There are things you do stencil, of course--hearts, circles--and Terry Hill uses a lot of positive stencils.  That is, he uses the inside piece, sprays his color around it and then has his outline ready to freehand the detail into.  A shortcut I use when I have a large run of identical items to do for a team or other group is to make a sublimation transfer and heat set it onto the shirts.  That way, I only have to draw the design once on paper.  I have access to a prehistoric sublimation machine which prints from a large roll of paper and cuts it to size, but you can also do them on a computer printer.  
To be truthful, the best shortcut is to hone your freehand skills to where you can paint quickly without drawing first for your stock designs.  Make sure your lettering is clean and stylish and for cryin' out loud, if you get a burr on your needle, change it! Nothing makes airbrush look worse than unnecessary overspray.
Tell me a little more about the type of designs you do as a rule, and maybe I can help more. Please let me know if any of this was what you were looking for.
Ellen