Penguin (part three)

This morning, I painted in the motif on the t-shirt...

I use 'silk' paints for this (the type you would use for silk painting), and for the motifs, I use them neat and on dry fabric, as this means they will (hopefully) keep most of their colour. The greaseproof paper is still between the front and back of the t-shirt, so none of the colours from the motif will run through to the back, and at this stage I can leave it to dry flat, which reduces the risk of the colours bleeding.

Once the motif was dry, or nearly dry, I painted in the background...

The background colours are painted on the fabric wet, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I usually use two or three different colours, or shades of a colour, and they blend much better wet on wet.

Secondly, if I used these particular paints neat on the whole of the t-shirt, rather than just on the motif, it would make the end price of the t-shirt stupidly high!

At this stage, the t-shirt has to be hung up to dry...

The blues will be a couple of shades lighter at the end of the process than they look now in this picture.

The reasons that it can't be dried flat at this stage, is because both sides, front and back, need to be dyed at the same time, or any paint that has leeched through when you paint the front, like this...

...wont blend, once dry, with the new paint you add to the back, and it will look blotchy rather than blended.

Unfortunately, painting both sides and then drying it flat anyway doesn't work either, because for some bizarre reason, if you do that, the paint just completely disappears from the side that is touching the surface.

So hanging it is!

It will need to dry completely now, before I can move onto fixing the dyes and removing the wax, hopefully tomorrow at some point :)