Unless you are talking about the English back-up band for Cliff Richard, shadows are black. The British aren’t always a good example to follow anyway; ever heard them pronounce advertisement, schedule, or aluminum?
This mistake with artwork is something we see a lot in the screen printing industry, and now in my neighborhood apparently. Usually it happens when people decide to save $25 on making a new screen for dark-colored shirts. Most prints start out as dark ink on light fabric/paper. Then, after the screens have been made, somebody comes up with the clever idea to print the same design on dark garments with light-colored ink without inversing the image and making a new screen.
Guess what. Now you’re in inversed reality land where shadows are white, white people are black (not African American mind you, I mean black like a crayon), real African Americans have white shadows, our President looks like an extra from Miami Vice, and the designer/printmaker becomes an “artist”. Being lazy and ignorant doesn’t make you an artist; you have to go to art school for that.
Learning to create images with a proper regard for light and shadow isn’t difficult but can become extra challenging when screen printing is involved. If you’re considering printing the same image on light and dark shirts and are in doubt about how to proceed, email me and we can discuss your options.
Co-founder of Danger Press in 2004, J’s background is in corporate identity design, photography, calligraphy, illustration and marketing. He enjoys solving problems, negative space, brevity, black cats, and the color gray.
