Painting a Vintage Graphic Tee

Painting a vintage graphic tee.

There are so many graphic tee shirts in print.

Some focus on sports teams.

Others highlight different breeds of animals.

Others still feature colleges, and universities.

Thie particular tee shirt has a graphic of a U.S. city, and state.

It was initially charcoal gray in color, and the graphic was purple, blue, and white.

Painting a Vintage Graphic Tee - Choosing Colors

I admit that painting this tee shirt was a little challenging for me.

The colors were not appearing on the shirt in the way I had envisioned.

I had selected four colors before I got started: black, red, yellow, and white.

In my mind, part of the shirt would be dark orange, and part would be light orange.

I started with the black.

Then I added red.

The next color of paint that I added was yellow.

(As I am looking at these photos, I probably should have stopped at yellow. The tee shirt had a colorful, yet faded look at that point).

My next color was white.

After adding white, I didn't like the look of the shirt, and I didn't know what color(s) to use to make it look better.

I decided to go with turquoise, magenta, and copper.

Unfortunately, none of these color choices made the shirt feel complete to me.

I ultimately added turquoise again, and decided to stop there.

The original tee shirt.

The tee shirt after black paint was added.

The tee shirt after red paint was added.

The tee shirt after yellow paint was added.

The tee shirt after white paint. was added

The tee shirt after turquoise paint was added.

Tne tee shirt after magenta paint was added.

The tee shirt after copper paint was added.

The tee shirt after turquoise paint was added a second time.

If I had to do it over, I would not have painted the tee shirt in such a hurry.

All of the hues may not be visible immediately, but they come forth once the paint sits for a while, and dries.

I also may have repeated the four colors that I initially intended to paint the shirt: black, red, yellow, and white.

Adding a second coat of paint brings more color, and brilliance.

Toward the end I realized that the graphic needed to be more pronounced.

I was careful to then paint around it, and not on it.

The city, and state are somewhat visible, but I still need to have a lighter touch when painting on the graphic.

That being said, this is a tee shirt that I would indeed wear.

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