Misspent Youth, The Technique

I would never have gone so far as to call myself a graffiti “artist” even back in the day but there is a slight chance that I may have dabbled in a little urban… decoration in my time. My (alleged) technique of choice was stencils because of the speed and precision of the image.

Putting all of those hours spent with an Exacto blade to good use for the sake of a Boba Fett cosplay commission.

 

This was done for an as-yet-to-be-revealed project. The image transfer technique that I was trying didn’t work at all (so grateful for no deadline!) so I went back to the tried-and-true for this part of the process.

I have definitely come to prefer screenprinting for a lot of my textile work but it was great to have this to fall back on as a low-tech solution when I needed it.

And there are still a lot of undecorated dumpsters in my neighborhood so it might come in handy! Allegedly.

 

The Images, The Album Art, the Tshirts, the Technique

As much as the music and lyrics were behind the Steam Punk series, the art and logos found on the liners, on those black rock shirts was just as much a part of the experience for me. The task was to scale those images to tea cosy size! I tried a few different techniques with varied success.

For the more complex photo, I tried Mod Podge as it seemed to be one of the more reliable methods out there.

I reversed the images as necessary, tried a few sizes as I didn’t know what I wanted and just followed the instructions.

The greyscale photo transferred really well for what I had intended but there were a few patches that didn’t register. I suspect that the goo was a little thick and just didn’t cure sufficiently. It was kind of like creating an iron-on decal right on the surface of the shirt.

 

The crazy quilt style of the Steam Punk pieces means that I was able to maneuver around the bare patches.

The other technique involved soaking the paper in solvent and burnishing it straight onto the fabric but… it didn’t work, not even a little so I don’t have any pictures of it. I’m game to try it again as I suspect that I used the wrong type of printer to produce the transfer images. I’ll write about that one when I get another run at it!