What shall I use to draw on clothing?

mishmashlearning

6 years ago

When I started being an artist I took part for three years in an event called Artisans on the beach in Swanage. Every December we would hire a beach hut from the town council for the month and just intoJanuary. This year’s event has been cancelled linked to covid-19 and now that I have the shop aiding fit the criteria.

The first year to be noticed and for fun and, oh, keeping warm I wore some different outfits which included my cloud suit, a penguin onesie and a combination including Christmas sweaters.

A fancy dress suit bought online – the cloud suit

“Super penguin” onesie plus sweatshirt and shorts as layering to keep warm

My antics which helped to keep me warm made me noticed too but I thought I would like a suit that I could hand draw on. At the time investigations at the start of 2018 drew a blank.

In the 2018 event I added another commercially bought fancy dress outfit, riding on a polar bear’s shoulders although this one got lots of attention for looking dubious especially when dog owners found their pets trying to bite the polar bear’s nose.

A picture with Dorset’s own Motorbike Santa in polar bear outfit and Christmas sweater.

Inspiration had struck about a possible suit solution that might work and not be too costly in case it didn’t work – a decorating suit. So a paper based one from a large diy chain was bought and drawn on using fineliners and Winsor and Newton ProMarkers.

A snug fit but decorator suit / boiler suit would work well

The suit however was very thin and snug! So when drawing card had to be put inside so that the pens did not go through the fabric and tear it. Also once worn removing it caused a tear. So the artwork potential was great and my usual media would work but I needed a more substantial suit.

I found a workwear shop in Weymouth and bought my first white boiler suit. More roomy and able to wear extra layers beneath to keep me warm on the seafront. So the first suit became my Artisans on the each suit and was created and drawn in 2018, worn for the 2019 event and other art events too. The ProMarkers worked ok on the fabric and didn’t bleed very much. Later when it came to washing hand washing carefully was needed as it defaced quite quickly. I still have this suit and wear it in the shop sometimes. It included 6 original art panels that enabled me to show people from my outfit what my art looked like.

Yes, I really sat outside and drew on the suit while wearing it, a great conversation starter. The chest pocket shows the pen design with lids on when the pocket flap is closed and without lids when the flap is raised.

Poor fellow artisans had to sit with this loud suit next to them, mind you I did make tea for them.

In 2019 I started to also have some decorators bib and braces again drawn with the ProMarkers. The best example being the Christmas card advertising set which I add new cards to the range to each year. 2020’s card needs adding.

Christmas cards outfit, a lot more comfortable than a sandwich board for advertising and the cards themselves for sale. To the right of the picture was a set I started using some new media – UniPosca marker pens with acrylic paint.

As mentioned above I now started to try the Uni-Posca markers with acrylic paint. You can fix the colour by ironing on the reverse and the brightness of the paints lasts longer.

In 2020 a new surface to draw on – hats, pith helmets and fancy dress versions of the same. These have been done in both ProMarkers and posca pens. The posca paint provides a brighter finish, time will tell how they last as its only 5 months since I started this.