Old Port stores are filled with cartoonish T-shirts that tourists snap up as keepsakes of their trip to Maine. But if you want a shirt that really represents the state, take a look at the hand-painted tees created by Morgan Mitchell under the label My Maine Tee.

Her black-and-white creations are wearable art: a string of lobster buoys dangling down the torso on a scoop-neck tee ($38), a fish or whale swimming across the chest, a bobbing harbor seal playfully peering out from a onesie ($34).

Mitchell’s designs are inspired by the simplicity and subtly of the work of her father, Maine photographer Robert Mitchell. When she was growing up in Boothbay Harbor, she watched him develop mostly black-and-white images in the basement darkroom. At 13, she painted her first black-and-white T-shirt for a friend.

Today Mitchell works at her studio at A Gathering of Stitches in Portland’s East Bayside. She combines silk screening and hand painting to create her designs. No two are alike. “I find that the paint brush, ink and water is the only method that accurately expresses the seamless beauty of form,” she said. “In my eyes, it is the only way to capture the bend of a shadow, or the weight of the harbor fog.”

She buys her T-shirts only from socially and environmentally responsible suppliers that use recycled and organic materials and treat their workers fairly. A primary supplier is Threads for Thought, which uses 60 percent organic cotton and 40 percent recycled water bottles for their tees. The company donates 10 percent of every purchase over $100 to a program that starts community gardens for immigrants all over the United States.

For her part, Mitchell donates $1 from every tee sold to the Art Van Program (artvanprogram.org), a Maine nonprofit that provides mobile art therapy.

The tees are sold online at mymainetee.com and at The Stable Gallery on Front Street in Bath. Mitchell says she hopes to get them into local stores in the coming months.