BJ Betts

HS: With sneakers and tattoos, there is an obvious connection, but it’s like two parallel lines that sometimes converge.

BJ: I think, just fashion, the industry is really capitalizing on tattooists that want to get their name out. They’ll do things if people send them like 50 t-shirts. And then people will make thousands off the ideas. Affliction, the first that comes to mind—I’m not ragging on them—is one of those. They have a ton of tattoo imagery or style on their clothing. I was offered a thing for Spike TV, for a show. Devon from Nom De Guerre, he’s in the creative department for SpikeTV, he got a hold of me. He called and said, we’re doing this thing for Spike, and he said he’d need 10 designs and would get back to me on the budget. I called Andy at House 33, who said, you better get x amount for this. Then the budget comes back low, and part of me wants to say fuck it, it’s Spike TV, my daughter will see it on TV and it’s cool. But the other part is, if you start cheap, it is hard to go back up. It boils down to the same thing as bigger companies using tattoo artists, because some want to just get the stuff out there and think the going rate is low. Then Affliction calls and offers $500 bucks, and people are just hyped to see their stuff on a t-shirt. People don’t look at the bigger picture. And I didn’t either until I talked to Andy.

HS: So, it has really benefited you to have the relationship with House Industries when it comes to learning how to price your work.

BJ: Definitely. But, you don’t want to totally kill it. Some things you want to decline if the money isn’t right. He turns down huge projects too, if he’s not into them, and will do some projects for less if he’s really excited. There is a super fine line. Sometimes if the job is high profile enough, it is ok to do it for less. Not totally about integrity or keeping it real, it’s interesting.

HS: You see something like the Addict collaboration, where the product is great, but you’re also sold on the website, too.

BJ: Yeah, and I’m actually working on some new stuff for them right now. Some new fonts and stuff. A lot of the guys like that I’m still pen and ink, and I hand in raw material. Though, I do want to learn Photoshop and Illustrator. I have final say, obviously, in what gets put out, but in my mind once it goes into Illustrator my line might loose a bit of flavor and not feel right to me anymore. If I could do it in Illustrator, I might take another variable into my control.

HS: I want to ask you about designing sneakers, because when someone gives you say an arm or a ribcage to work on, you know how to fit it, which is similar to playing with a sneaker model you’ve been given. Do you assess it that way at all?

BJ: That’s totally how. If I’m drawing a chest panel or a sleeve, there is a basic shape and you have to follow that pattern a little bit. The structure of the muscle and how that fits, you’ve got to take that into account with how to make the aesthetic work. With a sneaker, I might have an idea of the shoe, like the new Adidas I did, [and I imagine] a bunch of artwork over the side and back of the shoe, but seeing a picture of the doesn’t allow me to understand all the curves. When they sent me the template for the shoe, I’m like, “Shit, this is nothing like I thought it would look like.” I had to redo it a bit to make it fit, but once it gets back on it wraps around and looks completely different than what you originally had in mind. On this Adidas, I wanted to have clear stripes so you can see the artwork. You totally have to look at it like a tattoo, and that’s what I relate it to when doing the work.

HS: What I like about the Motive t-shirt and other off the body art you’ve done is that while it retains a tattoo flavor, it isn’t an Ed Hardy shirt. It has a depth of shading, but it doesn’t scream “TATTOO.”

BJ: I didn’t want that either. I’m glad it didn’t look that way.

HS: And, of course, the printing on that is awesome.

BJ: Andy uses that all the time on House. It’s called discharge printing. Completely smooth to the touch, discharged into the material.