Greetings!

I first would like to thank you for your time. This would not be any fun if it weren’t for you taking time to read my blogs.

Next, I would like to introduce myself. As my web address indicates, my name is Jim Watson. Sign wise, I started in this business “assisting” my father and his brother when I was 4 or 5. This mainly consisted of “sit down and be quiet”. I was amazed at how they could stroke a lettering brush and paint any design and font on a piece of sign grade wood into, in my mind, functional art. The steadiness of their hands, the intense concentration, with eagle eye gazes, they would create lines so straight and corners so tight that one would strain to replicate the same with a foot ruler and a ball point pen. Even though I would be with them for hours and my patience would wane, I was still yet mesmerized.

I am at least a 3rd generation sign artist. I have had the privilege of being in a time when we, as a society, have moved from an analog age into digital. To the sign business, what is quickly becoming the lost art of hand lettering signs, car doors, etc., has yielded to computers, plotters, printers and vinyl letters. I was privileged enough to spend several years hand lettering but never mastered the art of stroking a lettering bush to my level of satisfaction. I will leave that to my relatives before me who were the true masters of signs done the old way.

I “turned pro” in my early teens in 1982. Through the years, I have picked up the art of silk screening. It was created in China thousands of years ago. While once, one of the most prominent methods of printing, it has given way to the digital age also. It has been relegated to mostly the garment industry such as advertising on T-shirts and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who has experience with it.

I have created silk screens in just about ever way conceived. First, I would make screens by hand sketching an image and then using water based film and an X-acto knife. This was extremely laborious and not very exact.

Next, there was the short lived photographic age. I would essentially use a large camera to create images and text, then create film positives. Again, time consuming and the materials were expensive. This introduced a new product to silk screening though. It was the use of photo-sensitive emulsions. The same that are used today. As I said, the camera created film positives. In other words, what you saw on the film is what you would see on an item that is printed. Opposite to a standard camera’s film negative.

The reason it was short lived, is because computers and plotters entered and people were able to quickly create screen positives with them.

I want to apologize for being so long winded. Future postings will not be as long in most cases. If you take anything away from this, please understand that I love helping others. I love the art and blending of old ideas with modern technology. I simply love my job of making signs. Thanks!