A Guide to The Art of T-Shirt Color Separation: Guide to T-shirt Design and Color Separation

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Hey Guys,

I have had a few life changes over the last couple of years, so I have not had the time to maintain and post on this blog because of time restraints. Now that things are calming down I will be able to give more time to assisting beginning and intermediate artists in the field of T-shirt design and separations. Most of you have found that there is not a lot of schooling in this field, and most of the skills are picked up from experience of trial and errors and/or working with other experienced artists in the field. That’s what I hope to do here. I am a working stiff just like you and have gone through the same hurdles that you may be going through now. Hopefully, I can guide you through some of these.

My primary skill sets are in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I have found these two programs work very well together along with a Wacom or Cintiq to create and produce a great T-Shirt design. There are other programs I have used, but these are the two that I recommend and so much easier to get access for a monthly fee from the Adobe Creative Cloud. You can download a 30 day free trial to help you get started. This give s you beginners time to get the ball rolling and get your career off the ground.

I am a Senior Graphic Designer with River City Sportswear in the San Marcos, Texas locatio during the day and a freelance T-Shirt Designer/Color Separator in the evenings. Weekends, a little bit of everything. Presently I am tutoring with a few people across the country through a program called Team Viewer,

where I can teach Photoshop and Illustrator on their own computer. I’m really excited about this! It saves the students the travel and lodging expenses to come and learn at my studio here in Texas on weekends. Once I get this down, it will be a great method for me to teach this to startup artists from a distance at a minimal cost. Write for more details. mwdifferent@gmail.com.

Here are images of an idea for the River City Art Department that I came up with during a slow period. It began with just a sketch in Photoshop. From there, I pen and inked digitally in Illustrator. After I finished the inking, I decided to bring it back into Photoshop for coloring to create a cool T-Shirt design. From there it developed into a wall decal mural. I made a die cut for an image that was 8’ x 10’ feet. This was split printed on two 12’ x 4’ foot vynl sheets. It took about five of us to apply one, then peel the backing as we did this, then repeat with the second and match it. No easy feat on ladders and a very tacky substrate. After all was said and done, we had a very cool and inviting piece of art to show when clients tour the facility.

Sketched in Adobe Photoshop

Pen and ink in Adobe Illustrator

Colored in Adobe Photoshop

This is a DTG Print on a T-Shirt

Color Saturation and Hue Change for a Wall Decal

Marking Register Marks Between the Two Prints

Peeling Backing and Aligning the two Decals Vertically

Final Presentation!

Check back for more things to come as I work on developing my online tutoring and for some peeks at art and methods as I go. Thanks for stopping by my friends!

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