$100 T-Shirt Giveaway Update

Thanks to everyone who's entered the contest so far (see previous post for details). There are some really good entries that are being seriously considered, but I'm still hoping for a few more entries before I make my final decision. Remember- think "out there" and crazy. I'm currently leaning towards the more off-the-wall suggestions, but there is at least one "safe" idea that has my consideration, so you never know!

PhippsArt $100 T-Shirt Giveaway

It's fun to give stuff away. When I grow up I wanna' be a philanthropist!

But for now I am giving away $100 worth of shirts to one winner, and one shirt to a runner up. Whoever can help me come up with a PERFECT URL will be given $100 worth of T-Shirts! To encourage more people to enter, two randomly chosen entrants will also be given a free shirt.

Here's what this is about: I'm already selling my shirts online within Etsy and Artfire, but it's time to start my own URL as a place to sell my shirts. Initially it will point people to those shops, but at some point it will be a store in and of itself.

My problem (and this is where you come in) is that I can't decide on a name! My first thought was that it should have a name relating to wearing art: wear art, wearable art, yada yada. All the best URLs along those lines are taken. So now I'm trying to just think of something off the wall- something creative and bizarre. Example: prostheticbraintees.com (That one's a little long).

Here are the details:

1) TO ENTER:

-Please send your entry to:

contest [type the @ symbol with no spaces] michaelphipps.net

-Leave a comment to this post (if you want) but please don't post your URL ideas here!

2) Deadline: The sooner the better! The contest ends when I have decided on a URL. At that point the runner-up prizes will also be chosen. If I think of the URL on my own, I will draw 3 total names for runner-up prizes (one free shirt each) from the entries (must be at least 20 entries). I want to have this URL chosen ASAP, so expect this to be a short contest!

3) PLEASE check to see if your suggestion is taken before submitting it. Simply typing it into your browser does not necessarily tell you! Go to register4less.com (or somewhere similar) and type it in. You can do several at one time. I am only interested in URLs that end in .com

4) Extra stuff: You can suggest multiple ideas (which will increase your chances of winning the main prize) but will only have one entry for the random runner-up prizes. I reserve the right to reject entries that seem like you're "not even trying" and not even include them in the runner-up drawing. Example: ihopeiwinyourstupidcontest.com

Winners may choose any shirts as available on http://phippsart.etsy.com
The grand prize winner will get FOUR total shirts, whether the total (including shipping) is above or below $100.

4) Hints: Here is some more information on what I'm really looking for:

The name should DEFINITELY be catchy, easy to spell, memorable, creative, and unoffensive.

It would be NICE if it is also short.

It can end in "tees" , "tshirts", "garb", "wear" etc. but doesn't have to!

One of the most popular t-shirt sites on the net is www.threadless.com - I'd love to have something that simple and creative. Remember also that it can be REALLY off the wall! quixoticcabbage.com? Sure!

Good luck!

Radio Interview

I'll be interviewed today on BlockTalkRadio about my art, screen printed shirts and about the Handmade Movement. It airs at 9:00pm EST on www.blogtalkradio.com/blockheadrod

Tune in and hear me fumble through my first ever radio interview! Expect long, awkward delays, constant searching for every-day words, incoherent and irrelevant answers, and sorry attempts at humor. What could be more fun?

A Reformed Blogger

Ah, a new year. Time to resolve...stuff. Last year was my first as a blogger and I didn't do extremely well. From when I started in April to the end of the year, I posted all of 21 times. That's just over two posts a month. This year I've resolved to post every weekday (starting today, silly!). Does this mean this blog will fill up with mindless, inane, drivel? Well yes, but now there will be MORE!!! This is just one of many resolutions I've made this year. This one comes right after "gain ten pounds of muscle by pure will".

Shiny, expanding forehead shown three times in Utah paper...

I've been featured in one of Utah's two major papers "The Deseret News" as part of an article about Utah based sellers Etsy. They even featured three pictures of me working in my studio. You can see two of them and read the article at http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705268568,00.html

Its a positive article, although they did mislabel a picture of a frog as being mine (friends from High School might laugh at such a mistake).

(Image courtesy Stuart Johnson, Deseret News)

It's a curse!

As an artist your name becomes your business identity. Suddenly it matters that you have the most popular boy's name of the last many years. Before it just meant things like figuring out that 13% of your French class shared your name. Now it matters. There are a number of other Michael Phipps with web presence, and a few of them are even artists. Fortunately Phipps isn't extremely common, though. The main problem with the name, however, is that people tend to glance at it and see it as a similar, more common name. I think back in school that more substitute teachers called out "Phillips" than "Phipps" over the years.

Now there is a worse problem. Another common mistake is for someone to glance at my last name and see "Phelps". This didn't used to be a big deal, but now that "Michael Phelps" went from slightly known to ultra-famous, I can't travel the web without him being brought up. I have nothing against him, but that doesn't mean I want to talk about him with everyone I meet. Now if someone leaves a response to this post and says "Michael Phelps? Who?", I'll be their new best friend.

Bye Bye Birdie

I started a thread on Etsy asking for help in naming my new shirt (seen above in one of its four styles). Kind of by default I simply called it "SNIP". When I changed it to one of the names below, a bunch of people told me I should have left it! So...I changed it back. Nevertheless, here are all the suggestions. Which one do you like?

My notes are in red...

no strings attached
down to the wire
Severed connections
dont fly with scissors!
Snip... let the birds do the flying
cut-the-wire....
end-communication....
Cut it out
chirpy-chirpy-snip-snip (Goofy but I like it!)
Cut to the Chase
bye bye birdy (Hee hee)
Off Line
very cool shirt btw (It WAS suggested, albeit jokingly)
Lorena Bobbitt shirt (Had to look this up. Oh yeah, HER. Next...)
nsa = no strings attached
cut above the rest
Evangelin shirt
Quick! My Mother-in-law is Calling!
Dropped Call
Cut Loose
Flying Without a Wire
Call Screening.
Fly away Peter, fly away Paul.......
It's time to cut the strings!
Sproing (Another favorite of my own because this shirt really is about what is GOING to happen)
going wireless
like birds with wifi...
breaking habits
The Birds.. The Scene They Didn't Show You
Live Wire

My Thoughts as Pressed Flowers

When I have ideas for a new piece of art or a bit of music I'll often write them down on tiny papers which end up going through the wash or getting pressed like flowers in crisp pages of unread books. One such idea for a screen print was written down a few years back and has finally seen fruition on a T-shirt. The idea is that of a scene consisting of a lot of "potential energy"- where a lot of chaotic movement is possibly about to happen. The shirt is, of course, for sale here: http://phippsart.etsy.com.

Parsecs and Filigrees

I recently held a contest in which contestants had to wax poetic in order to win a prize. The following poem by http://sierrapelonacrochet.etsy.com was the clear winner, and was inspired by the shirt design above (click to see the listing in my Etsy store)

(Note: I couldn't get past the first line without pulling out the dictionary [i.e. looking at the dictionary widget on my computer])





the psychedelic eye sings
of parsecs and filigrees

its unblinking gaze is
a witness to auroras and migraines

such a solemn orb,
yet it does not weep

and on the shortest night
when you awaken from sleep
you'll find this mystic eye
regarding you, gauging you,
as it calmly goes about
creating order from chaos

Stay Focused on Mindless Media

Do you find yourself getting distracted when trying to numb your mind? Read on...

Years ago a friend and I were going door to door (not an easy thing for me) and ended up in a very peculiar house. The resident told us about an invention he was working on and brought us to a room which housed the said innovation. He opened the door and we beheld a room full of gadgets and wires, connected with doodads and whatimazoots of all kinds. It reminded me of the kind of thing that used to be common in 80's movies, where gears, conveyors and ropes connected to household gadgets would go through a huge process to produce a piece of toast or feed the dog. I'm not sure what this particular thing actual did, as the door was quickly closed, perhaps to keep us from stealing the idea.

Now to the subject of the post title. I noticed that there was a round, black sticker directly in the middle of his television set- I'm guessing it was about the size of a nickel. When asked what that was for, he replied that it was so he wouldn't be distracted while watching TV! True story.

So the obvious question is, why don't TV sets come with this feature as a default? Also, why isn't there a pizza-sized black dot in the middle of the screen at the movie theaters-- what if we get distracted by a thought not related to the movie? Why don't kids wear horse blinders when they play video games? Otherwise they might catch a glimpse of a family member in their peripherals! Why don't cell phones alert their owner when they haven't sent a text message in the last 10 minutes-- what if they become aware of the friends they're actually with !?!

Thought of your own idea like the ones above? Leave it in a comment below this post!

Odd Jobs, Part 3

One of the positives of being an illustrator is that there is the potential to reap financial benefits from previously created work. Such was the case ten years ago after I had stuck my somewhat disconcerting self portrait onto promotional postcards and sent them out into the world. (This painting now serves to remind my kids that "daddy is watching", although the lack of glasses and the presence of bangs makes it a little less recognizable to them. But when I can afford lasik- look out! I don't intend to get plugs, however, to solve the other problem).

Back to the original train of thought-- I soon realized after sending these postcards out that it was a poor choice, as I didn't intend to make portraiture my specialty. Not to worry, though, I didn't get any jobs from the mailing. Well, not any NEW jobs. Besides the inconsequential "you're on file" return postcards, I did get one magazine exec to write and ask permission to use the image I sent in their magazine. The price was $350, and for not having to do any additional work to make it happen I thought that was a pretty sweet deal.

Big...mistake.

Your probably asking, "what was the magazine?" I'm not about to tell you. I did check it out AFTER sending back a contract and became more wide-eyed than I am in the painting. The magazine was a sleezefest and I was glad to not find my mug within its pages. Maybe it happened in the subsequent issue.

I hope not.

Every once in a while, one just needs to create a blog post that's even shorter than the title, and that time is now...

I'm not likely to patronize businesses with those gimmicky blow-up figures out front.

Odd Jobs, Part 2

Admittedly, this job isn't very "odd" in and of itself, but you might find the ending of the story intriguing. I give you permission to laugh at me as I have had time to get over the shame and hurt...

Sometimes people who need an art related job done will contact universities in the hopes of finding young talent (read: cheap talent). I responded to a few of these requests in my college days, and this particular one was to paint a mural in a downtown hotel restaurant. The need for a new mural arose as a tornado had twisted its way through downtown Salt Lake City and destroyed the old one. It had also taken out several trees from the neighborhood of my youth, but I digress. Anyone who grew up in Salt Lake "knew" we could never get tornadoes because of the mountains. But there it was.

I put off making my proposals for the mural and ended up showing a few ideas I wasn't really excited about. Mistake number one. I also told the owner of the hotel that I thought they needed a new logo because "no one I've talked to likes your current one". Mistake number two. (I'm quite surprised I was so bold!) My main reason for being so rash is that I was to incorporate their hideous logo into my mural, and I didn't want it blemished so.

They wanted me there when the restaurant was closed, so I painted at night. After a few weeks it was complete, and I neglected to take any pictures of the finished product. I figured I could come back some time later and take care of that. Mistake number three. Within a year the restaurant had been bought out and become a sports bar. My mural was replaced by a wall of sports figures. When I first saw it I stared at their cruel faces for a while and wondered if my painting was hidden beneath. I may have to wait for another tornado to ever find out.

Odd Jobs, Part One of _____

As an illustrator I am finally at a point where, for the most part, the jobs I do are mostly in line with my ultimate goals as an artist. In other words, I do actually turn down a few jobs, which in the past year include house sketches for a real estate web site, graphics banners for a DJ, and jobs whose time to pay ratio would work out to about $4 an hour. Really.

'Twas not always so, (and who's to say what lies ahead). Initially an artist has to take any job that is even remotely related to art. At first if the client even knows how to spell "art" you're pointed in the right direction.

Let's look back on one of those first freelance jobs...

After graduating with my art degree, I thought moving near one of the art capitals of the world might be a good idea. So off we drove to Connecticut so as to live near New York City. When I finally broke free from the warehouse job that I was forced to get upon arriving (as I couldn't find anything art related), I spent some time down in "the city" trying to promote my work. One day I went alone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sat in a large open area, surrounded by Greek statues (or were they Roman copies?). I was sketching one of them when an older man approached me and asked if he could buy me lunch and talk about my art. Free lunch and a potential connection? Of course!

Well, it turned out this man was a Brooklyn-based dentist, and he had some grand scheme concerning a dental invention, which was basically a robotic arm that worked inside the patient's mouth. There at the table he proceeded to arrange his silverware and other objects to resemble his invention. Before I knew it I had committed to come to his office in the near future to draw up the plans. I went home with a pit in my stomach, wishing I had firmly but kindly said "um, no thanks"! But I hadn't, so I found myself in Brooklyn some time during the coming week.

In a way it was still kind of exciting- going to Brooklyn for the first time in my life to draw for a mad dental equipment inventor (he wasn't so mad, but it makes for a good story). I remember going in and briefly meeting his wife, who seemed to me very sad, and who disappeared into the back. I began my labors as an artist while the dentist showed me his prototype on his poor assistant. Yet all this time I knew that I'd be telling him that this would be our only session. When that time came he put a lot of energy into trying to change my mind, but eventually sadly sent me on my way after offering to pay me for the work that I had done that day. In retrospect I should have made the break before coming that first time, but it can be hard to say "no" to someone who wants to use my skills, even if they don't REALLY include dental instrument design...

More to come...

Psychedelic Eye

I've finally put up a new shirt design after several weeks of nothing, so here it is! When I started drawing it it was supposed to be for both men and women, but it turned out rather feminine-- so no luck for the guys. I may still try to do a second version for men later on...

Here's the shirt.