A-Rod's Dufflebag

The Legacy of Albert Pujols?

Manny, Manny Dollars

The Big Unit Meets Little Timmy Lincecum

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Garret Anderson: Brave Angel

The 92% Discount

Griffey Sails Home

Derek Jeter

Nationals Player to Be Named Later

Open Sketchbook

I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW MUCH I've been itching to draw more baseball art, and yet am constantly battling time constraints. Raising a 3-year old just doesn't afford much of any free time for me anymore. Gone are the days of creating 50 hour vector illustrations. 10 hour illustrations are also quite difficult to maintain. Even two solid hours of drawing is a rare luxury. So I've settled on the 30 minute sketch. While not the elaborate oil painting I still itch to do, it's what I can realistically do several times a week, find some artistic fulfillment, and still spend time with family.

Ahhhhhhhhh....Spring!

DAYLIGHT IS GETTING LONGER, temperatures are slowly rising, and after a sluggish hot stove season, the Boys of Spring are back!

Night Diamond

NIGHT BASEBALL has been around for quite some time now, and this photo captures but one of thousands of lighted fields in North America. I'm drawn to the photo because it captures in a quaint way a small pocket of baseball in Toronto. From the soft glow of light on the field to the limited bench seating, this game is nestled quite cozily into the hillside. It's worth noting that the lighting is much more subdued than found in Major League Baseball. It is also strongly reminiscent of Morris Kantor's Night Baseball painted in 1934.



(Photo #1 credit: flickr/sewm)
(Photo #2 credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum)

CafePress Shirts Review Part 2

In Part 2 of my CafePress shirts review I want to follow up on my request for a reprint of the Sayonara! shirt and also share the results of washing the shirts.

Customer Service - A Slight Confusion

One of the benefits of working with CafePress is that they take care of the printing, fulfillment and customer service, just that they don't always get it right the first time. After requesting a reprint of the Sayonara! shirt, I received the Baseball Blood Drop shirt instead. So after contacting them again, they apologized, told me I could keep the other shirt as a token of their customer appreciation, and put a rush order on the reprint, which arrived in 2 business days! It's hard to be upset with someone who is willing to go the extra mile to make amends.

The Sayonara! Tee - Revisited
I wasn't quite sure what to think as I unrolled the shirt, but was pleased to see that the reprint did not have any of the streaks in the red like the original shirt. Looking closely, I could also see that the registration was slightly off by 1/16 of an inch for the second printing of the red. Obviously this is less than ideal and it does make me wonder if all multi-colored prints are printed out of register. While unnoticeable from a distance, it's something CafePress should not allow to go unnoticed.

Pros: excellent return policy
Cons: hit or miss on direct-to-garment printing colors, slight registration issues
Final Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Wash Results
I've gotta say that washing a new shirt is one of my bigger concerns when it comes to printing shirts. Was the shirt cured properly? Will the print fade significantly after the first wash? So I'm actually thrilled to say that both the Baseball Blood Drop ringer tee and the Jesus Saves shirt held up well to separate washings in the washer. The ringer tee image showed impressive ink durability after the first wash. The Jesus Saves print also held up well with no sign of fading. The slight translucent sheen on the shirt also disappeared after the first wash as stated by CafePress that it would indeed. So in all, I'm very much satisfied with the durability of the printing inks used by CafePress.

The shirts can be viewed in more detail here.

CafePress Shirts Review Part 1

I received the sample CafePress shirts from the OCTOBER MOMENTS CafePress sister store and had mixed reactions overall. So I ordered three shirts 1) a white/red ringer tee with a photorealistic image of a baseball/blood drop, 2) a red Jesus Saves tee printed with only white ink, and 3) a royal blue Sayonara! tee with red/white ink. Here are my thoughts:

The Packaging

The shirts arrived in a CafePress plastic envelope with each shirt neatly folded, rolled up and cuffed with a small sleeve of recycled, brown kraft paper and a CafePress sticker. Simple, clean and lean. Tearing off the cuff and unrolling the shirt, I could almost hear the drumroll in my head.

The Ringer Tee - Baseball Blood Drop

The shirt is a CafePress brand shirt and is labeled as such. Shirt quality is very good and has just the right thickness--not too thick, not too thin. The collar and cuffs are also well-made and better quality than older varieties. My first impression of the blood drop print was so-so, but I realized quickly that I was comparing it to the original, photorealistic digital file, and well frankly, a printed t-shirt design almost never approaches what you see on the screen. My reservations namely had to do with the amount of noise or grain in the print, which I will discuss in just a bit. So after seeing the print, I instinctively ran my fingers over the printed area and I could feel mostly the cloth itself and only a hint of the ink—very impressive (as opposed to plastique or a paper-like iron-on), but I'll need to wash it a few times to see how much the image fades over time.

Back to the issue of noise and grain in the printed image, I decided to compare the results with other printed tees I had at home: a Mickey Mouse tee from Disney World and a Shamu tee from Sea World. What I found was that all the tees, including the blood drop baseball tee, were printed with some form of either CMYK or halftone screening, hence the noisy and grainy dot effect. My initial so-so reaction soon turned into satisfaction, and I find myself liking it the more and more I look at it. The only other critique I had was the dark areas being a bit lighter than desired, but again, this is somewhat typical of what you might find anywhere else as darks are rarely if ever true darks. So it's a minor quibble. While there's still room for improvement in direct-to-garment printing technology, CafePress' print quality is definitely acceptable, if not standard for its industry.

Pros: quality shirt, subtle print texture
Cons: a degree of noise/grain in print quality
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Red Jesus Saves Shirt

CafePress uses 100% cotton Gildan Ultra tees for their line of dark tees. One of the things I was looking forward to with CafePress was the technology used to print on dark shirts. All dark shirts are printed with a base of white ink that for all intensive purposes, looks and feels like screenprinted ink. Once this base is printed, all other colors are printed on top using direct-to-garment printing. Since this shirt only contains white ink, it's more or less like a silkscreened tee. Two minor quibbles about the white ink: 1) the edge of the print isn't quite as crisp as the original design--it still looks very good, and 2) there were occasional specks of the red fabric showing through the ink. Still I was quite happy with the results. One other thing worth noting: the shirt has an ever-so-slight film on and around the design that according to CafePress will disappear after the first washing. All said, I'm definitely excited about wearing this shirt.









Pros: white ink softer but comparable to screenprinted ink
Cons: minor blur on edges, minor fabric specks exposed
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Royal Blue Sayonara! Shirt
The difference between this shirt and the Jesus Saves shirt is that it includes a layer of direct-to-garment printing on top of the white ink base. When I unrolled this shirt, I was less than thrilled. The red was more of an orange-red and had several vertical streaks of yellow running thru it, similar to when an inkjet printer starts printing line gaps when the ink is running low. I was a bit surprised that the yellow streaks or line gaps passed quality control. So after contacting CafePress for a refund, I received a quick apologetic letter from a customer support rep stating that not only would they gladly reprint the shirt, but also that I would not need to spend both my time and money sending the original shirt back to them. That's GREAT customer service, if not for questionable quality control! With that, I'll be posting a follow up review when the new shirt arrives.







Pros: excellent return policy
Cons: hit or miss on direct-to-garment printing colors
Preliminary Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Misty Fall Baseball

DID YOU THINK of the movie Field of Dreams when you saw this photo? This is actually taken from a game in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, according to the photographer. There are a few things that make this a great photo. The fog. Fog is dramatic and has a tendency to suspend our sense of reality. It creates a mystery where details are unclear and leaves us in wonder. In particular, that the outfielder's feet disappears into the ground makes it almost seem as if he's floating. The outfielder's relaxed pose is also quite calming to the viewer. Had he been in a more tense and tucked position, the mood would be dramatically different yet still effective. Another nice aspect of this photo is the sense of depth established by the foreground and background via the simplest of details. The edge of the infield dirt defines the foreground while the chain-linked fence stands in the background. The photo doesn't need anymore detail and gives us just enough to make us ponder the game of baseball.

(Photo credit: flickr/Sister72)