Alyice on March 26th, 2008

The T-shirt Phase

After a few years, my aunt ventured out to try new things and one of the crafts she picked up was creating hand-painted t-shirts and sweatshirts. Of course she had a natural talent for painting that carried right over into her hand-painted clothing that would make anyone envious.

She took classes to perfect her drawing and painting skills, then would call me over for a week-end of trial and error. Now, when I say trial and error, I mean it. I was horrible! That knack for drawing I had as a young child was lost and I just couldn’t seem to find it again. And believe me I tried.

Luckily, my family and friends were encouraging. They not only asked me to make them shirts, but they wore them! Yes, they wore them! Now, if I were a small child, I could see proudly wearing something I created, but as an adult or teen with fashion sense…

My biggest fan was my mother. She was very encouraging. She’d ask for very specific things like her favorite character, Garfield, or my childhood favorite, Tinkerbell. She’d even ask for holiday-themed sweatshirts. My mom had always been disappointed that I put my art aside as a young child and would often ask me to start back up so when my aunt got me back into painting and my mom saw how much it relaxed me, she encouraged me to keep moving forward with it.

Truth be told, I am not even sure why I stopped creating as a child. I don’t know if someone ridiculed me or teased me to the point of walking away, if I simply lost interest, or if I was really “anal compulsive” back then and couldn’t handle the stress of not getting everything “right”. All I know is that I stopped and that when I picked up painting clothing, I had discovered how “anal compulsive” I really was!

With painting statuary, it was relaxing, invigorating, and fun. There was already a shape that could be transformed with just a little imagination and lots of patience. But painting clothing was entirely different. There was this blank canvas that required some real talent on my part and as much as I loved the time with my aunt, I found painting clothing to be very stressful. I was so preoccupied with trying to get everything right that I zapped the fun out of the entire process.

Eventually, I walked away from painting clothing, but picked it back up five years later when my first child was born. He was a messy eater and spit up a lot—as all babies do. His clothes were constantly getting stained and I couldn’t see throwing them out simply because of a “stain”. But I also couldn’t see him wearing them so I bought a child’s t-shirt board and began creating little pieces of art.

I still wasn’t great at it, but my kids loved mommies’ new creations and eventually asked to get in on the act. Through painting with my children I learned to “just have fun” with the process and to appreciate the thought behind each piece. It was more important that we build memories than it was for me to “get it right”. After all, I wasn’t doing it for money—it was simply something fun to do with the kids and for the kids.

We had so much fun creating gifts for the grandparents; especially when it came to memorializing their little handprints. We continued painting clothing on an “on again, off again” basis for the next few years, but eventually moved on to other crafts.

Artist's Life | Leave Comment | Bookmark | Tweet This |

AlyiceEdrich.com
I'm a mixed media artist and freelance writer. Need web content? Want to commission or license art? Let's Talk.

All images and content are copyright protected.

Shop My e-Stores

Coming Home

My Blogroll

Return To Home Page

Follow Me

Become A Facebook Fan

Need A Guest Blogger?

an email

Need A Guest Designer?

an email

Copyrights

All material on this blog belongs to Alyice Edrich, unless otherwise noted. No project, artwork, or text may be reproducted without the consent of the creator. That includes making derivative works for resale. Please use project tutorials for personal use and/or gifts only.