Friday started off great. I met up with my buddy, Jon, at Lake Cunningham and we went on a (socially-distant) walk around the park. After one lap Jon split and I stayed to do one more then ran into another friend, Adam, who was getting off work at the park. He drove up to show me he was rocking my San Jose shirt. That made my day! I didn't realize I was wearing my San Jose shirt till afterwards. On the way out of the park I snapped a picture of this awesome hand-drawn found-dog flyer posted near the entrance. When I got home I showered, ate lunch, did some crossword puzzles, and started drawing. It was an awesome day up until that point. Soon after, I heard about protesters downtown and on the 101 holding up traffic. They were protesting in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police. Soon I was seeing friends videos on Instagram of people smashing car windows, police firing tear gas & rubber bullets, crowds throwing objects at the police, a trash bin on fire in the middle of the street, a car running over people, people looting a Starbucks, a cop getting knocked out. This shit is crazy and there are protests/demonstrations/riots happening in multiple cities across the US. I wonder if this is going to continue through the weekend and what will happen in its wake.

I was supposed to DJ an event tonight but I got text this morning saying it was canceled due to Coronavirus concerns. Bummer, because I really needed the cash. This time of year is already pretty slow for DJing. I did wake up to some good news though, an online t-shirt order came in. Before I got notified about the event being canceled I was planning on just bagging the shirt and sending it off. After getting word that I wasn't gonna be working I started drawing a Thank You card for the t-shirt order. I drew my head first then the tentacles & letters with pencil. Then I inked it with a couple Micron pens and fixed a few mistakes with Pro-White. When I was done I threw it in the bag with the t-shirt and a couple SJ stickers and delivered it. The customer lived 15 minutes from home so I figured I'd save him a couple days of waiting for it to arrive by mail. 

For the past few weeks I've been in contact with a gentleman who stopped at my booth in October  during the First Friday Street Mrkt. He was with his son who talked with me for a little while about my San Jose shirts. They didn't buy anything but I gave them a flyer before they left. A couple weeks later the dad emails me because he wants to buy a couple shirts, and my online store showed I was sold out. He asked when I would have more available again because he wanted to buy a couple for his son and his son's girlfriend as Christmas gifts. I let him know that I was in the process of printing more and I contacted him as soon I as they were available. Today I delivered the shirts after his son left home because they're going to be a surprise. Just thinking about the excitement of unwrapping Christmas presents, and those presents being my t-shirts, totally made my day  :)

They're heeeeeere... almost. More EMNSJ shirts have been reprinted and are ready for pick up. I can't wait to get my fat little hands on them :)

Check out the Downtown Screen Printers on Insta

There was a bunch of Halloween candy & mini comics leftover from last night. The comics are pretty rad, they come in 25 packs to give away to trick-or-treaters or use as party favors. Today I thought it would be cool to slip a comic and some candy into the bags of anyone who orders a shirt online. I also made shipping & handling free.

On Saturday I'm working a wedding in Soquel and Sunday morning I'm DJing a memorial in San Jose. This is a first. I've never worked a memorial before. All I was given was a loose timeline and bunch of music. Normally I'd be a lil nervous going into a situation like this but I'm working with a professional event planner, that I've worked with before, and after our phone call today I'm feeling alright. We'll see how it goes.

On Sunday night I'll be picking up my San Jose shirts from the printers. Then I gotta count, fold & sort them all and update my online store's inventory. There are a few people waiting on those shirts and I can't wait to get them out.

I spent a lot of time today, and previous days, trying to figure out how many shirts I should reprint. I used to try and guess which sizes & styles would sell more. Now that I have more data I can see what sells faster versus what stays in inventory longer. And because I'm on a budget for the rest of the year (I'm setting money aside for income & sales taxes) I've decided to reprint in smaller batches, starting with my most popular design. I intended to reprint all EMNSJ styles but my supplier was all out of heather gray blanks so I just bought black shirts for now. That's ok since my two most popular styles are the Black/Blue and Black/Pink EMNSJ (San Jose) t-shirts. If I ordered the right amount, and sales continue the way they have been, I shouldn't run out of one style/size too quickly or have others sit for too long. They blanks should arrive soon then they're off to the printers. Hopefully it won't take more than a couple weeks to have the finished shirts in hand. 

It stands for Eyes, Mouths & Noses. Creative AF, I know.

It originally started as a drawing I did in October 2017 for #Inktober using only Eyes & Mouths. A year later I'm playing with the idea again and added Noses. Boom! T-shirt design number 2 (EMN) is born.

Fast forward to 2019, a couple weeks before San Jose Day in April. I wanted to make a new shirt for the event and get it done quickly so I thought drawing SAN JOSE in my EMN style would be a piece of cake. Wrong! It took me an extra two months to get shirt number 3 (EMNSJ) made. Barely in time for SubZero in June.

Fun Fact: They are not faces. Each eye, mouth and nose is fully independent of one another.