A while ago, in my post about The Beanworld Dress I mentioned that I've a bit of a history drawing with marker on T-shirts. I started ruining, not only my white T-shirts, but those of all the other kids in my neighborhood after the summer of 1961--my first season at Camp Thunderbird in Bemidji MN.
At Camp Thunderbird, having your T-shirts drawn upon by an incredibly talented man named Jim "Pogo" Ploss was considered a big priviledge. Pogo was one hell of a cartoonist and song writer. The influence he had on me is considerable. I plan to write quite a bit about him when I can get my hands on my drawings and photos from those days. They are at my parents' house not with me here out west.
But...having said that, I learned how to draw on cotton watching Pogo and have done it on and off ever since.
I went through an incredible period during the late '70s and early '80s drawing highly stylized, whacked out vibrantly colored versions of Superman, Batman, and Fantastic Four on T-shirts using Pantone markers.
I used to wear them all around town and to comic book conventions in the years before I had gotten up my courage to show Beanworld to anyone.
Most of those T-shirts are packed up SOMEwhere--and for sure the sketches and drawings for the shirts exist somewhere too! (I never intentionally throw away anything to do with Beanworld --but I often file stuff according to methods and protocols I cant quite remember later.)
Anyway...above is a photo of Cory holding a hand rendered T-shirt that I found yesterday (between visits to see Margaret) folded up next to the Blue Bean Composition. It is dated 1993, so it is a rather late entry into my oeuvre of hand drawn T-shirts.
As I find more, either the actual T-shirts or photos of them, I'll post them here.
This post is just packed with great tidbits of what we have to enjoy in your future blog postings....Can't wait to see the superhero shirts.
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