I finally got around to filling in the background. Before inking the piece I did a mock-up in Photoshop, printed it out, and made a few edits. When I started I didn't take into account the black space between shapes so some areas barely have any background showing through. My solution was to shave some shapes down to allow more black to come through. I did everything on the photocopy before transferring them to the piece. I also tested Sharpies vs Copic markers on the same photocopy to see which black is blacker. The Copic was just a tiny bit darker so I'm been using that to fill in the background. 

Redux on the left. Original artwork on the right. 

When I printed the EMN shirts with the original artwork, a lot of the smaller details were washed out or blurry. Now that I'm going to print more I decided to redo the parts of the image that weren't so sharp. I printed the original artwork in black & white on paper then highlighted the parts that came out blurry on the t-shirt. I then digitally made some of those lines thicker and redrew others completely. This should result in a better looking print on the next batch of shirts. I feel like I did what George Lucas did to Star Wars when he released the Special Edition versions of his original trilogy. 

I few weeks ago I started wearing a new brand of hoodie that I've never worn before with the intention of using them as blanks for my brand. Here are some of my notes:

• The quality feels really good. It also feels thicker than other hoodies I've owned.
• The sizes run small. I wear a 2X t-shirt from the same brand that makes the hoodie but the 2X hoodies is really snug. A 3X might fit me better.
• The damn pull string for the hood kept coming out when I washed it. I swapped the original string for a fat white shoe lace but the lace got tattered after a few days from snagging on the zipper and looks like shit. I think I'm going to replace the original pull string and just tie knots at each end to prevent it from being pulled out.
• It sheds A LOT of lint. I think I've washed it 3-4 times now and it's still shedding. It gets caught in my stubble and on my clothes. Last week I washed and dried it with other clothes and they all had lint all over. I had to wash everything again and washed the hoodies by itself. 
  
• I'm still thinking about how I want to embellish my hoodies. I have some ideas but nothing solid. I hope I can get something ready and out the door while it's still cold outside.

It was easy for me to decide which brand blanks I wanted to print on when I made my Frankie Mcfly t-shirts. I had already worn the brand's shirts for years and loved the way they felt and their quality. Now that I'm considering hoodies, I don't have lots of experience with them, or at least any that I absolutely love. The ones I've been using for personal use were good but not great. Today I received a new blank. I'm gonna try and wear it as much as possible and run it thru plenty of washer and dryer cycles for the next few weeks to see how it holds up. I want to make sure this garment is the same high quality as my t-shirts before embellishing it with my work/art/name.