That flash of electric blue lifting off an old wooden post is always inspiring down on the South Brighton estuary walk. I love how the digital watercolour painting wraps around the side so half of the post continues onto the back.
Available now on pure cotton tees in four coastal colours tuned to show off the kingfisher’s plumage!
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Living in a small New Zealand country town, my friend and client, a Freezing Worker with a passion for restoring classic American muscle cars, especially those from American Motors, approached me with a unique commission. His project was to immortalise his cherished 1970 Rambler Rebel SST on apparel, inspired by an advertisement from the April 1970 issue of New Zealand’s Reader’s Digest.
The brief was clear—to recreate the black and white ad of the Rambler Rebel SST in colour, but with a modern twist suitable for today’s fashion. The first step was understanding the nostalgia and the essence of the car’s era. The brief to maintain the advertisement’s simplicity yet enhance it with a contemporary touch to resonate with both car enthusiasts and fashion aficionados.
I’m thrilled to unveil my latest wildlife artwork. It is a t-shirt that captures the majestic flight of the Karearea. This is New Zealand’a species of native falcon.
The karearea, or the New Zealand falcon, (Falco novaeseelandiae, also known as the sparrow hawk) holds significant ecological and cultural importance in New Zealand. It is the only endemic bird of prey left. This fierce predator symbolises the resilience of native wildlife, offering a powerful representation of the country‘s bird life. Interestingly, it is most closely related to the Aplomado falcon of South America. The karearea might resemble the Australasian swamp harrier or Kahu and occupy a similar ecological niche. However, these two bird species are not closely related. This highlights the karearea’s unique evolutionary path and its critical role as an apex predator.
Check out the karearea design in action in our new YouTube Shorts video:
The inspiration for the design came from superlative wildlife photographer Rod Morris. Chrissie and I visited Rod’s image library in Dunedin back in the 90s when we were there exhibiting with The Great New Zealand Craft Shows. We were looking for slides that he had cherry-picked. These slides had the potential to be developed into hand-separated wildlife art for screen printing.
For the Kiwi who dares to dream big, this Kiwi Space Shuttle tee is a must-have. This black Surface Active tee showcases the beloved Kiwi icon of a classic MkII Zephyr transformed into a NASA spaceship, manned by three Kiwis soaring through space, bound for a drive on the moon.
The clever design incorporates the rocket science of the black fabric of the shirt as deep space for a comfortable fit. The design is also available on garments for women and kids.
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This unique two-sided t-shirt design explores the fascinating world of the Tuatara. The front features Shaun Waugh’s original pen-and-ink portrait of an 80 year old Henry, the revered tuatara residing at Invercargill’s Southland museum who is now over 120-years-old. The intricate details capture the reptilian skin texture, while the Southern Cross constellation hints at Henry’s age and connection to the ancient Southern Hemisphere. In the background is a glimpse of Stephens Island, a sanctuary for these “living fossils” extinct on the mainland for over a century.
Optional Back Design: For a complete story, choose to include a complementary map on the back. This map pinpoints Stephens Island and showcases fossil ammonites from Farewell Spit, Tasman Bay, further emphasising the Tuatara’s being a “living fossil” link to New Zealand’s prehistoric past as part of the supercontinent Gondwana, along with Antarctica and Australia, 85 million years ago.
Celebrate New Zealand’s unique wildlife and geological heritage. Get your Tuatara t-shirt today!
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Chrissie and I are happy to announce the launch of our Surface Active New Zealand Nature T-shirt Company store. You can shop here to get your Surface Active teeshirts.
Chrissie and I created our New Zealand nature t-shirt company and clothing brand, Surface Active, in 1985. As design pARTners we create wildlife T-shirts in the spirit of fun. Our subject matter is native flora & fauna, landscapes and Kiwiana—designs that celebrate some of the unique and beautiful assets of our country that we love.
We have had many requests to make our most popular T-shirt designs available again. So I made it my lockdown 2020 project to complete the job of launching our brand new Surface Active Teespring store.
From whales to wetas, paua to penguins—please browse through our store to see if there’s something for you.
All the best,
Surface Active design pARTners: Shaun Waugh (boss), Chrissie Terpstra (bossier)
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Christchurch is the gateway to Antarctica, has been for well over a century. The International Antarctic Centre was established in 1990, the visitor ‘Antarctic Attraction’ was opened to the public two years later.
In 1991 the Attraction’s “Antarctic shop” merchandising and trading manager invited New Zealand’s leading souvenir T-shirt screen printers to each enter a set of Antarctica T-shirt designs into a competition, speculatively, to be judged and voted on by staff members of the various national Antarctic programmes based in Christchurch—hundreds of world-class scientists, explorers, transport support staff and the likes involved in preparing for their work in Antarctica. The brief was wide open, wildlife art designs, historical designs pertaining to Christchurch’s involvement with the 1912 epic of Captain Scott’s race to the Pole.
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ORANA WILDLIFE PARK, MCLEANS ISLAND, CHRISTCHURCH
The retail market of the garment trade is tough, for an open range zoo like Orana Park, with one foot in the quality recreational experience sector and the other in the tourism sector, trading is highly seasonal. The competition for the customer’s discretionary spending dollar and the fact the park is a charitable trust that generates 95% of its income from gate takings and their ‘Trading Post’, demanded that the very best way of developing the Park’s new T-shirt range be used for this custom T-shirt design and print project.
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Surface Active | Making waves in a sea of sameness.
Hyper-real graphics like the Jewel Gecko make a vivid impression. Why? Because people relate to them! Dramatic lifelike renderings of wildlife produce a prompt and typically positive response in a person’s mind. People relate to real things and enjoy them most. It is the route to why people relate to many of our eye-catching and impactful “SurfaceActive” wildlife-art-to-wear designs.
How did we do it? The technique of colour separating this design by hand involved breaking it down into eight separate designs, from which the screens are made. The separations are printed over each other, in layers to create the original hand screenprinted design. This crafty route is the only way to achieve the unparalleled vivid impression of the design.
Fashions come and go, then come around again, but the fundamentals stay. The inspiration for the designs came from getting to know superlative alpine/wildlife photographer Colin Monteith, and renowned wildlife photographer Rod Morris. We visited their image libraries to cherrypick the most beautiful jewels in their amazing archives that we could see had the potential to be developed into hand-separated wildlife art screen gems.
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Surface Active Wildlife art – making waves in a sea of sameness.
To make digital art of New Zealand’s Tuatara, that has the look and feel of a natural line drawing, the editing, fussing process can take hours and while it isn’t easy it is a great deal of fun. I take pleasure in design and I enjoy using the computer to draw with the stylus, inking over the scan just as easily as I would with traditional pen and ink. The production of design work is an incredible drill when you are doing your utmost to make it terrific. I do my utmost to make sure that every design project I work on is mega.
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The brand use manual or corporate identity guide ensures the new WindsorUrban logo is applied correctly in every application where WindsorUrban is identified. The purpose of the brand manual is to enable and regulate a uniformity in the firm’s visual image. WindsorUrban aims to design and manufacture the “go to” product and service offering within their market niche, the brand that their customers think of first when they want urban furniture and street lighting. The guide’s basic job is to teach everyone who uses it, what the brand is and how to effectively implement it.
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MagentaDot Brands 