Seth's 45th Birthday

Twenty years ago--1997--Seth's third and last year of being the JET Program English teacher at the high schools in Oki Islands in Japan, he decided to make t-shirts to sell as a fundraiser.  I think he was raising funds for a two week summer program they did every year for students who wanted to raise their English language skills up to another level.
The images I am posting here are his roughs for that project, working up to the actual image. (Unfortunately I don't have an actual one of these T-shirts anymore.)  He sent me the image, and I did the color separation and found a printer to print the shirts for him here in San Diego. He picked them up when he came home during the summer, and took them back with him to Oki.
Summer at Japanese schools are not the time between grade levels.  Since the school year starts in April, summers are just time off for students and teachers while it is TOO hot to study.

Clearly this is a very preliminary drawing.

He had the idea of doing a pretty Japanese
girl in full dress, and was working out how
to make his mind's image effective.

This rough sketch shows that he originally
had the idea of giving her a mask; maybe
her exterior was more refined than her real
person (note the red nose).

This is his roughly inked rendition of the image he ended

up using.  

The final image.

The final image in color.  I think I painted this one, according to his specifications,

just to make sure the colors were right before I had 500 of them silkscreened.