Painting a Fabric Banner

On Wednesday my boyfriend asked me to paint a 2' x 2' banner of the Greenman for his archery booth on Saturday.. So I dropped everything to get going on it because I knew it would take a few days. I started with medium weight pre-washed canvas. I know canvas shrinks and I didn't want it to shrink the first time he washed it. Then I ironed out the wrinkles. It's much easier to paint on smooth fabric. I covered a Masonite drawing board with brown paper first, in case the paint went all the way through the canvas.I used tape to hold the fabric to the board and stretched it as taut as tape would allow.

I needed to find a way to get the image off the computer and onto the fabric. First I tried printing one out but the colors were all funky. What worked best ultimately was to pull up the website on the computer screen and then to take a photo of the image with my digital camera. I kept it next to me on the porch and looked at it whenever I got stuck. My goal wasn't to make an exact image. I just had to be in the ball park. Yes, I freehanded it. If you can't draw to save your life there are other methods, like using an opaque projector to shine the image on the wall and then trace around it.

To make a circular guideline I just traced a giant embroidery hoop with a #2 pencil, then used a ruler to add 3" all the way around to the circle. Or you can rig up a string compass to draw your circle. Since he wanted the banner to be 2' x 2', I cut a square 26" x 26". The extra 2" will be the hem. If you are making a casing at the top or side for the flagpole, add more than 2".

Even though I've had fairly good success painting on fabric with regular craft acrylics, I wanted this to be washable so I used fabric paints. The brand I bought has to be heat set with an iron. Read the bottles before you buy to make sure the paint is right for the project.

Using my pencil I drew the Greenman medallion. I tried to draw as lightly as I could because I wasn't sure if the paint would cover all the pencil marks. I was able to use the pencil eraser to scrub away some of the marks. Then I started filling in the larger motifs with paint straight from the bottle. I didn't try to do any mixed of colors yet. You can see in the first photo that it's basically like coloring in a coloring book at this point.

Once I got all the main shapes colored in, then I started mixing my own paint to get the colors I needed. I started out with medium green, light green and dark green. I also had a bottle each of brown, yellow, and white. With those I was able to mix olive green and lighter green and shades of brown. I had to make artistic decisions at that point as to what color to put where.

Probably the most fun is doing all the final details like adding the veins to the leaves and putting the highlights on the nose and lips.

After all the painting was done, I took a green Sharpie permanent marker and traced around the whole medallion, around some of the leaves, and across the eyelids. Test any markers you plan to use on a scrap of fabric first. Then get the fabric wet and make sure the makers don't run. Finally, I used the marker to sign my name.

When it's completely dry we'll iron it to set the paint following the directions on the bottle. Then it will be hemmed and ready to go tomorrow.

Read the paint instructions to see what the drying time is. Dry according to directions, then iron to set the paint. After that the banner will be hemmed on a sewing machine and grommets will be added to the corners. But luckily I'm just in charge of painting so my job here is done.