A fun lil foray into drawing & painting on nonstandard surfaces.
I like to try new things, and I like to do as much as I can myself if possible. I’m also a little stubborn. Sometimes this proves disastrous and greatly discouraging, and sometimes it’s kind of amazing what I’m capable of doing on my own with relatively limited resources. Like how I decided I wanted to make my own pin up calendars, printing & binding and everything, and it turned out pretty successful and fun?! I'm quite proud of what I created!
I’ve been fixated on fabric recently, and I decided that since I can’t weave tapestries (a skillset that I imagine takes many years of study, practice & resources to master) I can certainly crapshoot with the skills that I do have, like adapting my drawings to sit onto surfaces that weren’t intended to be drawn or painted on.
Y’know, like placemats, tea towels, and panties. I hit up the thrift to find various types of fabrics to paint abominations onto and to subject to other… experiments, you could say. It was kind of morbid flipping through racks of carefully folded fabric items and feeling them between my fingers, wondering what kind of paint scratched hell I could inflict upon it.
For the initial drawing phase, I didn’t fuck around with a pencil sketch because I knew it’d be difficult to erase or remove. Fuuuuuck that! Engage chaos, I want permanent ink on that fabric right now. I rigged up my LED light pad and some tape to stabilize, printing out an image on regular copy paper. I traced my lines with pigment-based ink pens, focusing on imprinting the main shapes. The fabric tugs quite a bit depending on the fabric type; I highly recommend Sakura Pigma Brush Pens for this as the flexible tip allows flexible coverage which makes for much smoother application!
Once I’m satisfied enough with the transfer, I turn the LED light pad off and wonder how permanently damaged my eyes might be and how I might never truly recover if I keep living this way. I take the ugly sketch and fill it in with the room lights on.
Hanging placements and doilies on walls or putting them on a coffee table is super great, and it’s nice that I can see my illustrations applied to these purposes whether it actually suits or not, because no one asked for this and it was born from my own curiosity. It's a strangely powerful feeling drawing on something with no business to be drawn on. I must admit, I do remember actually having quite the history of drawing on & absolutely mutilating t-shirts as a child... why must I inflict so much pain on so many well-meaning and innocent fabrics? Why am I compelled to do this?
The next phase of this fabric-inking adventure is drawing on stuff that hangs from human flesh bodies. I’ve had t-shirts produced in the recent past, and with more space and logistics I’d love to have more—alas, I must pace myself with these 1-of-1 pieces of tortured vintage & second hand otherwise I will be entirely too overwhelmed.
Anywho, let's draw something filthy onto some cotton panties:
Polyester and nylon are much easier to draw on and appear to be pretty receptive to actually bonding to ink. I saw an image of a ribbon chatelaine on Pinterest and shamelessly appropriated and bastardized it onto a pair a of vintage pajama shorts because how fucking cute?! do you even see this right now?!
✧ Here's a helpful resource about painting on nylon, its properties, and much more in depth knowledge! ✧
Sometime probably last year, I had drawn up this design for a ~*~Rococo Tramp Stamp~*~ intended for the back of a t-shirt, but applying it to a slip skirt makes so much more sense! It's a delight to see this idea come to life even better than I had originally intended. My head is spinning with a ton of ideas and projects in this realm!! I'd love to add hand sewn gems or charms or lingerie bows?! Is it gonna be a Tramp-Stamp-Slip-Skirt-Summer?!?
Aaaaah but what about all the comics I wanted to knock out this summer?! SIGH. There's always July.
More illustrative fabric projects and experiments to come!
♡ Thanks for reading, friends! ♡