Winning T-shirt design for Bloomsday 2013 in Spokane, WA. There are hundreds of entries every year, and I have been lucky enough to have been chosen twice in the last four years! Bloomsday is a competitive race and fun run with over 50,000 participants every year.

To create this shirt design, I had tested and experimented with several watercolor techniques. First, I had to decide on the overall layout of the figure in the space. Once it had been decided, it would be more difficult to change and go back to composition.

Another technique. I'll call him "grunge runner."

After I had figured out the watercolor area and look, I scanned it into my computer. The original paintings were so large, I had to cut them into pieces and reconstruct them in Photoshop. After that was accomplished, I needed to create a halftone effect in order to confirm that the smaller details wouldn't be part of the screen print design. I may have gone a hair too fine still... It's tough to determine what detail is too fine for a screenprinter to handle effectively. 

The final result at the finish line. This year, I did not get to go along for the color proofing step. If I had, I would have tried to find a color that blended better with the yellow. They only used standard screenprint colors because of the quantity of shirts being prodcuced, so it makes it tougher to do everything you want with color. Live and learn! Perfect color or not, 2013's shirt was extremely popular, as confirmed to me by Don Kardong, the Bloomsday fun run founder himself!