GOLD ACRYLIC on AMERICAN APPAREL

This one-of-a-kind limited edition American Apparel hoodie was made for Brieann Tracey.  It didn’t come out exactly as planned but instead was sort of an experimental learning process.  I was given the ink to use with this one and it was ink that I have never used before.  It was actually acrylic paint not meant for screen printing.  I did a test print on a black t-shirt first and that didn’t come out as planned either but I figured what the hell.  There’s only one way that I’m going to know if this is gonna work or not, so I placed the sweatshirt on my printing table, lowered the screen, slopped on a bunch of “paint” (not ink) and pulled the squeegee down the screen 3 or 4 times.  The moment of truth.  As I lifted the screen I noticed plenty of unwanted streaks across the print.  “SHIT!” I thought to myself.  It didn’t work.  But why?  Not sure.  Was it because I’m not used to or equipped to print sweatshirts? Was it that the paint I was given was not meant to be forced through a tiny mesh screen? Was it both of these factors?  Anyway I was pretty bummed out because I obviously wanted to come off with a beautiful acrylic gold print on a really nice sweatshirt, but that weren’t the case.  I knew this particular sweatshirt cost upwards of 30 bones and I knew Brieann would be less than happy to receive her sweatshirt back with such a low level of craftsmanship.  I slept on it.  (not the sweatshirt)  I woke up yesterday morning with the shitty printed sweatshirt fresh on my mind.  I had to do something.  “Hand paint it”  was the first thought that came to mind.  It can’t get any worse, right?  Without any delay and brush in hand I went at it.  The finished product (pictured above) came out much better that I thought it would.  Although it doesn’t appear to be screen printed (because you can see brush strokes on it) it still came out much better that I anticipated.  The true test will be today when Brieann see’s it.  So this just may be a new realm of Broad Street Bootlegs™ that has never been entered before.  The realm of hand painted apparel.  Who knows. We’ll just have to wait and see.