Donkeyblog Donkeyshines is the Land of Absurd T-shirts!

February 16, 2009

Monkey and Bulldog Models- Day 1

Filed under: Artwork,Donkeyshines Acknowledgments,Donkeyshines Announcements — Tags: , , , — Ryan Klemek @ 5:47 pm

So I didn’t get as far as I had hoped this weekend, but I would say the pencil sketch is about 75% done:

jonlorettaday1

Now that I am working in acrylics, I am using a larger painting surface. That means I can’t fit the whole board on my scanner bed at one time. That means I have to scan it in sections and pains-takingly put the sections together in Photoshop. This is kind of time-consuming, therefore I will wait until I am all done with the painting to actually scan it. For these pictures of the work in progress, I am taking digital photos, which means there will be less clarity and detail than if I was using the scanner. I hope you can still see what’s goin’ on. One thing to note, if you look at the photos in yesterday’s post, you’ll notice that Loretta’s face looks a bit different than it does in the above sketch. That’s because I’ve decided to use a different photo for her face. I liked the way the t-shirt looked better in the one below, but I liked her expression better in the other photo, so I decided to combine the two.

February 15, 2009

Jon and Loretta and the New T-Shirt

Filed under: Artwork,Donkeyshines Acknowledgments,Donkeyshines Announcements — Tags: , , , — Ryan Klemek @ 8:46 am

It took a few days, but I was finally able to catch up with Jon and Loretta so that I could photograph them in the Monkey and Bulldog shirt.

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It was actually Valentine’s Day last year that Jon and Loretta got engaged, so it was neat to give then these shirts to commemorate that. It is especially nice for me since they are both my roommates, and since I actually was the one introduced them! They thanked me with a copy of the Indiana Jones DVD box set, so the least I could do was make them their own t-shirt. I think the photos came out pretty good, and I am excited to start the painting. As with the Pterodactyl Birdcage, I will be posting the progress each day that I actually work on it.  I’ve also decided to extend that $21.00 intro price through President’s Day weekend. If it’s an important enough holiday for new cars to go on sale, I figure it should work for t-shirts, too. I’d like to suggest that, if you are on the fence as to whether you should buy my shirt or a new car, you consider that my shirt is printed on eco-friendly bamboo/organic cotton whereas the car will be burning lots of gas and ruining the environment.

February 8, 2009

New T-Shirt- Monkey and Bulldog

Filed under: Donkeyshines Acknowledgments,Donkeyshines Announcements — Tags: , — Ryan Klemek @ 9:00 am

Here’s the first new Donkeyshines T-Shirt of 2009:

monkeyandbulldog200

The illustration is somewhat based on an actual live monkey rodeo show.  I wanted to evoke a bull ride as opposed to a sort of cattle drive, hence the specific choice of the bulldog. The real inspiration for this design, though, is closer to home. I made this in honor of my two friends who are getting married in September. Jon happens to get giddy as a school girl at the sight of bulldogs, while Loretta is a gushing fan of all primates. When I give them their shirts, I will then use them to model for the painting on the product page. I will post photos here in a few days. No need to wait for the pictures, though, as the Monkey and Bulldog shirt is already available. Between now and Valentine’s Day, you can buy this nice soft bamboo/cotton T for the low introductory price of $21.99!

February 1, 2009

Cereal T-Shirt

Filed under: My T-shirt Collection — Tags: , , , , , — Ryan Klemek @ 12:00 pm

I actually purchased this one directly from General Mills. 3 proofs of purchase and 5$ cash!

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It’s way too small, and printed on a not-so-soft Gildan shirt, so it’s not comfortable enough to wear regularly. The low-end production quality ads to it’s charm, though. It’s an old-school transfer on a crappy blank, so it looks and feels home-made. It doesn’t even have the General Mills logo or any trademark notice anywhere on the shirt. I’ll bet they printed less than 500 of these, and I certainly have never seen another one in person. However if you are nerdy enough to have seen “Comic Book: The Movie”, you can see one of the actors wearing this shirt during one of the interviews in the DVD special features. This gem of a movie was written and directed by Mark Hamill, and primarily shot at the 2003 San Diego Comicon, so I highly recommend it to all nerds. Not that seeing the Cereal Monsters t-shirt isn’t enough of a reason to check out the flick. After all, who doesn’t love Frankenberry, Count Chocula, and Booberry? Fruity Yummy Mummy, on the other hand, can go fuck himself, for all I care. Na, I’m kiddin’. FYM isn’t such a bad guy. I feel bad for him, cuz his cereal was “discontinued” on account of it being so terrible.

January 25, 2009

Who Would Wear an Ollie North T-Shirt?

Filed under: My T-shirt Collection — Tags: , , — Ryan Klemek @ 2:47 pm

In college, my love of absurd t-shirts was well-known, and I received some really strange ones as gifts from friends. This was one of the more controversial ones:

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Ollie North, notorious for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, was not a popular guy after that scandal broke. Apparently, he he must have had some fans, or at least that’s what the printer of this shirt was hoping. I think they may have over-estimated the size of that pro-North demographic, though. Soon after receiving this, I went back to the Salvation Army where it was purchased to find an entire rack of these shirts. I’m not sure who was originally selling them, but obviously shirts are only given away when it becomes apparent that people aren’t willing to pay money for them. However this was the early 90’s, which may have been the peak of the “ironic appreciation” phenomenon. A shirt like this was gold to hip college kids who wanted their clothes to be conversation starters.  I’m not sure if other people actualy bought the rest of them, or if the Salvation Army eventually got rid of them some other way, but those shirts were gone within a few months. It’s too bad the shirt makers couldn’t have found these customers directly, but they likely took the shirt’s message too seriously to consider that people might actually find it amusing. These were the days before stores like Urban Outfitters were trying to artificially re-create the ironic sensibility, before film-makers tried to re-market bad movies as intensionally funny, before anyone wanted to make an actual effort to appeal to this demographic. But many of us see such an effort to be phony anyway. It’s not real nostalgia if it was made last week. Also, we don’t wanna pay more than $5 for shirts like these.

January 18, 2009

Who Are the Girls on This Weird T-Shirt?

Filed under: My T-shirt Collection — Tags: , , — Ryan Klemek @ 2:31 pm

Finding a totally personalized shirt at the Salvation Army was always interesting. Especially ones with photos of actual people:

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This shirt is a custom iron-on transfer, most likely made at a mall. The first question I have is why was this made? Are these three girls sisters, making this shirt as a gift for a parent or something? If so, they must have very tiny parents, as it was really tight on me, and I’m 5’7″, 140 lbs. I can barely move my arms in it. Maybe they made it to commemorate a vacation they took together, or just their friendship in general. If so, did they only make one? Are there two more of these out there somewhere? The next question I have is how did it end up in the Salvation Army? If they gave it as a gift, it’s kind of shitty that the person got rid of it. Maybe the girls had a falling out, and wanted to get rid of all traces of their former friendship. Of course, it could very well have been discarded by someone who was cleaning out the attic and was unaware of it’s sentimental value, or just didn’t even notice it in a pile of other junk they were tossing out. Wouldn’t it be weird, though, to be walking down the street one day and see some stranger wearing a t-shirt with a picture of you on it? I always hoped I’d run into one of them some day. I wonder how old they are, and how much time has passed since it was made. Whenever I wear it, people always ask me who they are, which is a fair question. I always tell them that the girls are just the backdrop, but the parrot is a friend of mine.

January 11, 2009

Meat, The Press!

Filed under: My T-shirt Collection — Tags: , , — Ryan Klemek @ 7:41 pm

Here’s another strange T-Shirt I found at the Latham Salvation Army many years ago.

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When I got it, this was a very lived-in shirt. It was worn out and full of holes, which is probably why I only paid $0.25 for it. My question is, who likes the news show Meet the Press enough not only to buy this shirt, but to WEAR it regularly? Another question: Did Ted Koppel once have red hair? It’s hard to believe that the cartoonist behind this shirt would get a detail like that wrong.

January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , — Ryan Klemek @ 7:46 pm

I hope everyone had fun holiday times n’ stuff. I thought now would be a good time to thank everyone for supporting Donkeyshines in 2008, and to let you know that we plan on doing our damnedest to keep you clothed in wacky shirts in 2009. We have some interesting surprises coming up, including a new design just in time for Valentine’s Day. One thing to look for this year is product photos, as well as a new style of painting for the product images. For years I’ve been using watercolor for pretty much everything, but recently I decided to switch over to acrylics. This medium offers more control, which will come in handy when painting the design details on the shirt. Here’s the current work in progress:

octoacrylictempscan

I wasn’t quite happy with the painting I had previously done for the Octopus Web models, so I thought that I would start with that one. What do you think so far? For the next one I do, I will post the project in various stages so you can see the new process.

December 21, 2008

My T-Shirt Collection

Filed under: My T-shirt Collection — Tags: , — Ryan Klemek @ 8:37 pm

Even before I was making my own t-shirts, I was know for having quite an amazing collection of strange tees. The best part about this collection was that all of the shirts were found at the Salvation Army in Latham, NY. Unlike the tongue-in-cheek throw-back references to old pop culture that you find on shirts in trendy stores, the stuff I found at the Salvation Army was genuine and without intentional irony. Some of them were just so ridiculous that it made me really wonder about the shirt’s story. Why was it made? Why did the original owner buy it? Here’s an example:

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and on the back:

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Clearly, this shirt was printed for some fundraising event in connection with the Saratoga Hospital. Knowing this, however, does little in explaining the imagery on the shirt . What do sharks in a thunderstorm have to do with fundraising? What is supposed to be fun about fundraising and/or sharks in a thunderstorm? Mysteries such as this were why I always felt like an archeologist when I stepped into that Salvation Army. I never knew what strange relics I would uncover.

December 14, 2008

New T-Shirt Sizes

Filed under: Donkeyshines Announcements — Tags: — Ryan Klemek @ 8:40 pm

Three of our designs are now available in Men’s 2XL and 3XL: Donkey Pegasus, Gorilla and Duck, and Crocodile and Shark. We’d love to offer these sizes for all of our designs, but it may not be possible for a while. Continental, the company that makes the bamboo/cotton shirts we use for some of our designs, currently does not carry sizes larger than XL. Hopefully they will soon. We’re also hoping they add some new shirt colors.

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