Feb 12, 20223 min read

My Very First T-Shirt Giveaway Contest

Win an original WhyTheAlgarve t-shirt!

My amazing wife, Lisa, suggested recently that I hold a contest and give away a free, original t-shirt to promote my efforts here. I thought that was a great idea, so here we are. I have created six different designs available on a variety of print-all-over t-shirt styles as illustrated below. If you win, you will also have the option of adding whatever text you might like.

Entering to win is as easy as subscribing to my mailing list - that's it! You can find a subscribe form in the footer of every page on this website. You can also find it in the contest announcement near the top of the homepage. The contest is open for one month, ending on our youngest son's birthday, March 13. The winner will be announced on March 14, both here and on social media.

Close ups of the various designs can be found below. Style options include tank top, fitted t-shirt, and relaxed fit t-shirt for men and women. The contest is open to anyone, anywhere in the world - I will pay the shipping. Good luck!

I originally named this piece "Against Type" because it's a conscious effort to create a design with a softer and more traditionally feminine palette than I am used to working with. It's a very good example of the production of an abstract design by the aggressive deconstruction of a photograph. I took the original picture during my Great Big Europe Trip of 2005, stumbling across this gate during an evening stroll around Florence, Italy. I've always thought of it as the "Tim Burton gate."

Of all the designs I have recently uploaded to my Redbubble store, this 4-colour posterized treatment of a reflected mountain at dawn in a Banff lake is by far the most popular. Because the elements in it are set against a transparent background, any colour of shirt can be used, although it tends to work best with lighter colours. The original photo is from the stock image repository, Pixabay, and like all of their content has been designated as being in the Public Domain.

Once again, I'm happy to credit Lisa for the idea behind this design. She suggested cherry blossoms as an appealing motif, and I immediately appreciated the versatility of a very photogenic and appealing subject. I've come up with a number of designs based on the cherry blossom, with this one getting the most favourable reception. That particular shade of pink puts me in mind of a specific kind of Victorian-era ceramic glaze. It's important to point out that this is another design that uses a lot of transparent space. In other words, there is no ink anywhere that is black.

Again, the source photo is in the Public Domain via Pixabay.

This design was both planned and a happy accident. I had the idea of combining shots of misty coniferous treetops on steep hills and ridges to completely fill the canvas, knowing that the foggy edges would make blending extremely easy. Once I started layering them, I tried out different layer blending modes and found these colours emerging from the interactions of these grey, monochromatic photos. Of course, I intensified them for the final design (and cheated a little by shifting hues a couple times), but for the most part the colours are revealed rather than constructed.

All of the photos used to make this design were found on Pixabay; links in the gallery below.

As you can see, I've had misty forest ridges on my mind a fair bit. This is a relatively early design in my recent cartoonification/posterization odyssey, with the source photo coming from Pexels. I really like how it straddles the line between abstract and representational. I'm also happy with the palette - that particular blue can be tricky, wanting to fall into either ultramarine or teal.

I could (and will) write an entire article about the surreal festival of Las Fallas in Valencia, Spain. The final night of the festival, La Cremà, the burning of the monuments, is filled bonfires and pyres like this one. Posterization of that diminishing radiant glow on the surrounding architecture is something I'm enjoying a lot. Again, somewhere between abstract and depiction.

The source photo is by Monoyamonobooks at Wikimedia Commons under Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 license

So, CALL TO ACTION!

Enter the contest by subscribing to my mailing list. The form for that is found at the bottom of every page on this website (including this one).
Help spread the word when I post about the contest on social media by reposting, sharing, and whatnot.
If you win, please take some photos of you or someone else wearing your new shirt and send me a copy so that I can use those images shamelessly in future marketing campaigns. (In all seriousness, though, I would get your permission before doing that)

Again, good luck!