Design by Humans - New T-shirts everyday!
All T-shirts printed on high quality shirts created and voted on by the public

What is your current residence and occupation?

I currently live in Rochelle, Illinois. It is a fairly small town of about an hour and a half west of Chicago. I think the population is about 13,000 or something like that. I work in an even smaller town that is about fifteen minutes west of Rochelle called Ashton. That is actually the town where i grew up and it only consists of about 1100 people and one factory. The factory is where i work. I am a systems engineer and department head in the contract packaging portion of the business. The company basically blends and packages a large variety of dry ingredient food mixes that you would buy in your favorite grocery store. Everything from stuffing mixes to brownie mixes and quite a bit in between. This is quite a departure from what i went to school for (drawing and printmaking) and it is a fairly long story as to how I ended up there. However, it pays the bills until I can make a legitimate living doing art all the time.

How would you describe your style?

This is kind of a tough one. I definitely like to think that I have a recognizable style, but i'm not quite sure how i would describe it. I suppose my work could be described as slightly dark and twisted? I try to put a strong emphasis on the line work in a design without making it too overpowering and I think that is something that is recognizable throughout all my designs. Aside from that I don't know how else i would describe it!

You have described yourself as a "fine art" or "studio" type of artists, how did you get involved in creating Tshirt designs?

Well, I originally went to school for graphic design and I hated it. I couldn't stand being in front of a computer all day (if you know me you will find that quite ironic now). I wanted to have the hands on art experience. So I went the "fine art" route and majored in drawing and printmaking (primarily intaglio) When I graduated college I moved back in with my parents and started working while I tried to figure out what the next step in my life would be. Well, I didn't have a studio any longer and to be honest I became somewhat burned out on doing art because of an insane senior year at college so I sort of just stopped doing anything.

Fast forward three years and I found myself discussing starting a tshirt design business with one of my friends. We weren't sure where to start so I started researching what other people were doing on the internet. I came across a few sites but I still had no idea what to do or where to even start. So I joined the community of a small company out of Chicago (i'm sure you all know who [ EDITOR:Haven't heard of em' ]) and threw a really crappy design on their site. Well, it did terribly but I decided to try again and again and again. I suddenly found myself in love with drawing again and finding a new way to create art that I could enjoy and be satisfied with the results of. I now eat sleep and dream about art again. It's a great thing and I owe it to the awesome companies like this that are giving artists the opportunity to express themselves through a different type of medium...tshirts of all things!!

Favorite fairy tale or monster story of all time? and why?

I don't really know that i've thought too much about this over time but i think my favorite children's type tale is Alice in Wonderland. It was just so bizarre and crazy when i was a kid but in a really cool sort of dark way that I always really enjoyed it. Then, at an older age I realized how much darker it could be!! It just has all the elements for really awesome characters being created in the imaginations of artists.

Many of your design works have hints of the grim and sinister, where do you draw your inspiration?

Well, I think i've just been inspired by a wide variety of artists throughout my life thus far. I love imagery by a lot of great artists like < Egon Schiele and Robert Rauschenberg who I looked at quite a lot when i was in school. I also am very inspired by a lot of the artists that I have become friends with throughout my life. Nick Stakal and Steven Perkins are a couple of great artists that i am good friends with who were also a big part of why I got back into art again. I also think that my art acts like a giant stress reliever, as it does for many artists. I am a relatively positive and easy going person and I think that the reason I can be that way is partly because all the twisted and dark things that are in me come out in my art. To be honest i'm not sure where it comes from much of the time. I usually just start out trying to draw a funny character or animal that I am interested in or whatever and is ends up coming out just slightly darker than I usually intend!!

Your line work compliments the subjects of your work so well, what is your medium for design and how do you create your final illustrations?

First of all, thank you. That is a great compliment and i truly appreciate it because my line work is definitely the most important thing to me when creating a design. Everything I create is drawn by hand. I use good old fashioned pencil (and ink) and paper! The best way to create in my opinion!! :) I always do an inked drawing that i scan in to photoshop where I can manipulate color. The only effects that I don't create by hand would be halftones. I think everything else that i've created for tshirt design has been made by hand and scanned in. I do actual ink washes and so forth to create my textures, when i use them, but like I said earlier I add my color on the computer. Someday I would like to try the more digital approach with a tablet or something but only if i could get a line that I am satisfied with. I don't want to lose the organic feel that I think I can get when drawing on paper. I love the control and the best design and art to me is when you can see the human touch in the work.

How did you come up with "The Dark Side of Fairy Tale"?

Well, it was for a competition that was actually themed "The Dark Side of the Fairy Tale." So I wish I could claim that I was 100% responsible for coming up with it but I had a little push to get the creative juices going. However, I still had to come up with an idea and I decided to base it on some sort of obscure fairly tale. I don't normally have a story to tell in my designs or an underlying meaning but I really wanted to embrace the challenge for the competition. So I looked up some Grim's Fairy Tales and based my design on one of them....

Why did you pick the Grim Fairy Tale - "The Twelve Brothers" as your inspiration?

I basically was scanning through a bunch of the fairy tales and I came across "The Twelve Brothers" tale and had never heard it before. I really enjoyed it and thought that it was just dark enough to meld well with my style. It is just a twisted and sad story that does have a happy ending but just conjured up really good imagery for me. Plus, i had been wanting to incorporate a female character into a design since that is not something I normally do.

Support Jared! Buy The Dark Side of the Fairy Tale | Mens | Womens

Which is more important in a design - style or content?

Content is important to an extent for me but it is never what sells me on a design being great. I truly admire people that can have a theme or ideal that they can realize through art but I, at least at this point in my career, am not that type of artist. I would rather have a defined style and create imagery that people can enjoy for whatever reason they so choose. I don't want there to be only one meaning for my art. I want the viewer to take something out of it on a much more personal level. I want them to say "hey i love this shirt or whatever because it reminds me of blah blah blah..." or whatever.

Hopefully it's because it reminds them of this other awesome shirt or poster or whatever that they have, which also happens to be created by me ;) Seriously though, I just love art and design that makes me feel something. anything! I want to get that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I look at it. That feeling that you just can't explain and i don't think that you need strong content to do that. An image can do that alone.

What would be the most important piece of advice you would share with aspiring illustrators and designers trying to "make it"?

Haha!! I would ask the same question to someone else. I don't really think of myself as being anywhere near making it. However, I can say that I love what i'm doing and that if you don't have a love and a passion for it you are missing the most important thing for creating art. Create every single day and don't give up. LEARN HOW TO DRAW. I mean really learn how to. I don't care what type of art you are doing whether it be graphic design, figure painting, abstract, sculpture or whatever. Learning how to really draw is the most important thing to any artist.

There are so many people doing design today that just don't have the fundamentals and it shows. Talk to other artists. This has been a big motivating factor for me too and it has helped me learn a lot. There are so many artist forums and communities on the internet today that is would be a shame not to take advantage of them. Remember that there are other people out there just like you who have questions and uncertainty, even the best of them. So to summarize: Create every single day!! Talk with other artists and learn from them. They're probably just like you!! and finally, learn how to draw. please.

stumpyhorse's designs