| No problem. It meant he could devote more
time to that new boat and catch some rays. It also meant
he would stumble into a new career and form a partnership
that would become one of Fort Walton Beach's premier shirt
shops.
He just didn't know that when his sailboat was moored
next to Don Ashwood's. They had similar boats, and they
began talking. At the time, Ashwood had been painting T-shirts
at Jimmy's News Stand for about four years. Later they learned
that their trucks were identical except for the color.
Then one night I was playing darts and Don was playing
a few boards away. Fate said we needed to be friends," Hill
says.
In the early stages of the friendship. Hill agreed to
paint Ashwood's truck if Ashwood would do some airbrushing
on Hill's vehicle.
"He said, 'Why not let me teach you to airbrush instead?"'
Hill recalls.
 
The lab-coated, clipboard-toting corporate climber started
to learn the techniques and skills of painting T-shirts.
"We'd play darts until about three a.m., then go over
to my mom's house and set up in the living room. Don would
teach me something, then go home. I'd work on it until dawn
or later."
He worked to master the basics of shirt airbrushing, like
the rattail and the flare. But when he mastered the dagger
stroke, he knew he could do it.
In fact, when he's teaching students at the Airbrush Getaways,
Hill says he uses the dagger stroke to separate beginners
from more advanced students. Those who have trouble with
it are at a more basic level, he says.
"The dot, the hard line, the soft line, and the dagger
stroke are all basics. Then you add little tricks like stippling
and marbleizing. When they're all put together, you can
do anything," he says.
By the next summer. Hill was ready to join Ashwood at
Jimmy's News Stand—at least Ashwood thought so.
"I argued with Don. I thought I would never be able to
do it. But he said that the money wasn't in custom work.
He saw that I was able to pick up quickly, and he took me
for a walk down the strip," Hill explains.
During that survey of T-shirt artists in Fort Walton Beach,
Ashwood pointed out tech- nical flaws in work hanging in
the windows. "Then he took me to the absolutely worst painter
on the strip and told me that the guy was making a living
at it. I could, too. If nothing else, I thought, I'd pick
up a new skill."
They teamed up where Ashwood had been working. Originally
they called the shop Wet Dreams, a name that could generate
snickers. But Hill says there was a reason for the name—
something about both of them dreaming of sailing while they
had to be inside painting shirts instead. After a couple
of years, they dumped the name. They became Hot Air.
"We pushed each other. Hot Air is not one person over
the other. Don is more artistic. He's an artist. I'm more
of a technician. I can duplicate almost anything I see.
Some things I do well, and other things he does well. We've
each worked with other people and never had as much success
as working with each other," Hill says.
It's a long way from welding and factory work.
Hill's family moved to Fort Walton Beach from Mississippi
in 1968. Growing up, he was about as much interested in
art as he was in particle theory physics. "If I'd made a
list in high school of what I wanted to do, I doubt that
artist would have been in the top hundred," he says.
But he was good with his hands. He liked motorcycles and
even raced for a few years when his family moved to the
Philippines, where he says he was the number two rider for
Team Yamaha.
"I decided that if I became a motorcycle mechanic. I'd
ruin a good hobby," he says. "I turned to welding. I would
still be working with metal. Even now I prefer to be doing
something with chrome or hard, shiny surfaces."
He got a job with a new company that made airplane engine
parts for the commercial end of the British Rolls Royce
company. "I started as a grunt, patching holes in the building
and cleaning grease off the machinery as it arrived."
We're not talking about welding a couple of chunks of steel
together. This was complex, intricate welding of aircraft
engine parts using a technique called heliarc welding. He
worked with titanium, inconel, and other exotic metals.
"It was tedious work that required hand-eye coordination,"
Hill says.
Perhaps, he adds, that detailed, exacting work with the
welding gun helped him grasp airbrush techniques. "They're
both small instruments used to make a small, straight line,"
he observes.
But a steel strike in Britain cut the 'supply of raw material
to the company. People lost their jobs. Hill among them.
The first summer he was painting with his partner, the
company offered to rehire Hill. He realized that he didn't
want his old job. "Here I was, being my own boss, earning
a dollar a minute, and they were offering me peanuts."
At first. Hill painted names and beach scenes, the solid
foundation of T-shirt airbrushing. "Don was nice enough
to tell me when the stuff I did looked good."
Now the designs are more complex. Instead of spending his
days painting dozens of simple $2 names, he is often asked
by customers to paint more intricate designs costing upwards
of $15 for the extra time and labor involved. "I kind of
miss the old days, when the challenge was to see how many
names you could write in a day."
Business in Fort Walton Beach and nearby Panama City has
changed in the dozen years Hill and Ashwood have been together.
Cartoon scenes are popular now, like hotel room doors exploding
with beer bottles flying outward.
That stretch of the Florida coast has always been one of
the prime T-shirt airbrushing spots in the country. It draws
hordes of college students.
Though Fort Walton Beach is tamer and has a more refined,
slower pace than Panama City, college students and travelers
from Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi still
come there.
Those people are familiar with T-shirt airbrushing. They
may visit three times a year. And that draws competition.
With consumers who are sophisticated and knowledgeable,
sloppy work won't sell. "I don't think competition is bad.
People see the work that's there. It increases the quality,"
says Hill.
Despite the competition and ferocious work hours during
the summer season, Hill, 32, says airbrushing is still less
stressful than his old job. "The work is more relaxing.
You get to meet people. And if you mess up, it's not a $250,000
dollar part. It's a T-shirt that wholesales for $2.50."
Hill prefers to paint scenes that involve textures, from
rough and harsh to gleaming and smooth. "I try to make it
really look like rock or leather. The metal on cars has
a reflective look," he says.
His love of metal shows even in his favorite artist. Hill
says he's drawn to the work of Hajime Sorayama, the Japanese
artist famous for his chrome and metallic women and creatures.
Hill says he even painted some of the sexy robot figures
to practice his technique for painting metal and chrome.
The partnership between Hill and Ashwood is rare among
T-shirt artists, for both its staying power and its balance.
"If I take a day off to relax, Don will work and I get half.
It's the same thing when Don takes a day off. We split it,"
Hill says.
Even now, Hill gives full credit to Ashwood for getting
him started and pushing him in airbrushing. "It's all been
with Don standing at my shoulder, saying do this, not that.
I don't think I'd even be at the beginner stage of airbrushing
without Don."
Like many T-shirt artists. Hill is working to transfer
his talent from T-shirts to illustrations on boards. Many
of the skills translate easily, but some adjustments have
to be made because of the difference in surfaces. The T-shirt
is a highly forgiving surface that can absorb some less
than perfect strokes and spraying. Illustration board is
not.
But Hill is making the necessary changes. The former corporate
climber has become firmly planted in the airbrushing world.
"There's no way I'd go back," he says.
In fact, it's becoming more hectic. "I used to take the
whole winter off. When I was single, I could save enough
money to get through the winter." Now when Labor Day pretty
much closes the shirt business in the Panhandle, he and
Ashwood pack up and spend a month working the state fair
in Dallas, Texas.
It's 28 straight days from 9 a.m. until midnight, sometimes
2 a.m. This year that stint was followed by two months in
a mall in Kansas City for the Christmas season. Mall work
can be even more grueling than the state fair.
That might be enough for some artists, but Hill has become
involved in more than the art end of T-shirt airbrushing.
Working with several companies, Hill is also getting into
the hardware end. With his experience in T-shirt airbrushing
and his technical background, Hill has played roles in the
design of products for shirt airbrushing.
The Vega 2000 is one example. Thayer & Chandler sent him
a prototype of the brush that was aimed at shirt artists,
a market pretty much dominated by the Paasche VL.
"I looked at the prototype and critiqued it. I sent a three-page
letter with suggestions." Some of his suggestions included
increasing the travel of the trigger, changing the rocker
assembly, changing the head to three large holes that will
prevent clogging, and creating an opening in the handle
to make it easier to remove clogs. "They didn't use all
of my suggestions, but they used some. It was very gratifying."
Hill was also involved in the development of a compressor
that is designed for T-shirt artists. Working with Silentaire
Technology, the Terry Hill Professional model silent compressor
was the result. Hill says he had a prototype for six to
eight months. The compressor has wheels and a 24-liter holding
tank. It's designed to be easy to move for artists who might
be setting up at temporary sites like flea markets or festivals.
The machine also has a dual air filter system, and the petcock
is on top of the tank instead of on the bottom, where it's
hard to reach. The water is drained under pressure. The
handle also has a tray that can hold brushes or paint.
Hill's background in machine work has helped him in dealing
with manufacturers. He can talk the jargon of the engineers.
"My machining background made me believable. I wasn't just
somebody who asked if they could do this or do that. When
I was working on the Vega, I could explain what needed to
be done and make suggestions on how to machine it."
He says he wants to work with a company to design a projector
for T-shirt artists. "I use a projector a lot. When you
paint cars, you can get the right proportions and reflec-
tions with it fast. You can be as efficient as possible."
For instance, he says the projector for shirt artists should
be as portable as possible. He would also like to see the
copy area enlarged enough to accommodate a magazine-sized
page.
He's convinced there would be a market for the projector
among T-shirt artists. "Almost everybody who is serious
is using a projector, even if they're doing it secretly.
Here we are trying to make a living, and we should be able
to do things as quickly as we can."
He would also like to work on a manifold system so that
artists could connect and disconnect several brushes quickly
as well as have something that's convenient to set up and
tear down.
He has his own box for 20 brushes and paint that he uses
when he flies; he thinks it could be refined and marketed.
In fact, Hill says he would like to work on an entire system
of tools-and equipment for the T-shirt artist. "I hope in
the future to have an entry-level kit and setup, an intermediate,
and an advanced."
| Hill is also spreading his
knowledge in classes and seminars, most notably at Airbrush
Getaways. He's become a fixture in the T-shirt classes
and has done most of these seminars since 1989. But
the learning isn't all one-way. "In the end what I like
about teaching semi- nars is helping the people. At
every seminar I learn something, sometimes even from
beginning- level students," he says. |
 |
"I absolutely love it. It means a lot to me to look through
the review sheets after each course and see the good comments.
It's a learning experience for me. I always pick up a few
hints there. Where else can you get together with that many
artists?"
After all, he admits, where would he be without a teacher
as good as Ashwood was for him? "I bought the airbrush and
realized it didn't have a computer chip in it—you actually
had to learn how to use it. So it sat in the bottom of my
toolbox until Don came along."
Hill, T-shirt artist, product designer, teacher, and potential
producer of an entire line of T-shirt airbrush products,
wants to continue expanding his education and his work.
"I want to keep my feet in T-shirt airbrushing so that I
know what the T-shirt artist needs. But I would like to
work more with companies to make it easier for them to develop
the right products."
Illustrators might buy one or two airbrushes, a few tips
and needles, and a small compressor, he says. A T-shirt
artist will buy 20 brushes at once. That means 20 needles,
20 tips, hoses, and everything else. Because of the heavy
use T-shirt brushes get, replacements and parts are a constant
need.
He firmly believes that shirt artists are here to stay.
"I think there's a future out there for T-shirt artists,
especially in the malls. People are finding that they don't
have to go to resorts to find good T-shirt artists. More
and more, they're right there in town." WCA |
