|
 In
Moab, Patric Meador is probably best known
for his local cartoon column “Horse Sense”,
published in the Moab Happenings, which he drew from 1996
until 2000. “Horse Sense”, a playfully down to
earth cartoon, depicts the lifestyle, debauchery, and adventures
of a wild and lonesome old west horse. Meador does not pursue
cartooning on paper much anymore, but rather focuses his attention
on his custom T-shirt designs. Occasionally, a cartoon of
his is picked up by Easy Rider magazine.
Meador became a professional graphic artist in 1976, when
he and a friend partnered to open a T-shirt shop in Durango,
Co. He created the T-shirt designs to be silk-screen printed
on the T-shirts. After the T-shirt business in Durango, he
spent time on the road, travelling around the country selling
his designs for an income. In addition, he worked as, what
he termed, a “street artist”, a cartoonist or
caricaturist who makes drawings of customers on the streets,
in bars, in train stations, and wherever there are large numbers
of people willing to pay to have their caricature drawn.
Currently, Meador pursues his art through his own home based
business called Custom T-shirts. Custom
T-shirts features hand-drawn and painted, one of a kind T-shirt
designs made to order. Generally, Meador finds his clients
by attending car races, motorcycle rallies and events like
our local Jeep Safari or the Rod Benders Car Show. He takes
photographs of people with their vehicles, families, and/or
pets, and then creates a personalized custom design reflecting
the customer’s experience at the particular event.
From home, Meador sketches the design onto the T-shirt with
a permanent black Sharpie. Then he applies fabric paint with
the use of small paintbrushes and an airbrush. For his final
one of a kind T-shirts, later mailed to the clients, he charges
between $15 and $50 depending on the complexity of the design.
Normally a design will take him two to four hours. So if a
client needed a custom T-shirt for a present the same day,
he would be able to accommodate that demand.
 Meador
is a self-taught artist. He grew up in a small town outside
of Durango, in which his high school did not even offer art
classes. He discovered in 5th grade that he had a natural
talent for drawing. Having never had an art class, Meador
faced many challenges in teaching himself the mechanics and
techniques of drawing and cartooning through trial and error.
Meador’s cartoons and designs contain a complexity in
style and composition. His hatching and cross-hatching express
texture and surface. And he has an innate eye for necessary
detail, which he uses to convey the expression and motion
of a subject. In his newer T-shirt designs, like the Hummer
and Moab Off Road designs, he captures the delicacy, texture,
and oddity of the red rock landscape. He achieves this end
by the use of hatching, color and acute angles.
Another remarkable quality about Meador’s talent is
that he is colorblind. For most of his career as an artist
he only did his designs and drawings in black and white. He
recently decided to experiment with color with great success.
He can see relative values in tones of gray, which he uses
to place colors into his images (in addition to reading the
labels on the paint). His final colored designs succeed in
being vibrant and harmonious without his ability to see the
finished color.
Meador expressed satisfaction and enjoyment in doing his artwork
and his Custom T-shirt business. He has found a way of balancing
his art talent and his personal pleasure by paying his way
to events through Custom T-shirts, and then creating his designs
in the comfort of his home studio equipped with two televisions
broadcasting his favorite shows.
As a painter, myself, I asked Meador how he came up with designs
and ideas so rapidly and on demand for a variety of different
clients. He replied that this is no problem for him, generally
people give him an idea of what they want and he has no problem
in creating an image that meets their demand. Meador is obviously
gifted in drawing ideas from his mind and imagination. And
to be sure, 25 plus years of experience as a T-shirt designer,
cartoonist, and street artist provides him with a background
of efficiency, accuracy and creativity.
Patric Meador and Custom T-shirts can be contacted
by telephone at (435) 259-6177, ext. 128.
|
