Cool Spider Jerusalem T-Shirt

I like this T-Shirt. Excellent image of the brilliant Spider Jerusalem from the Warren Ellis comic Transmetropolitan. I saw it here and think I’ll have a go at doing one myself.

The guy wearing it, Brandon Cyphered, made it himself and this is what he says about the process:

It’s a stencil using fabric paint (for the lenses) over a bleach-job using this stuff called “discharge paste,” which does amazing bleach effects without harming the fabric and has the worst name EVAR

I used discharge paste. From the website, “a reducing agent for safely removing color from natural fibers, and is even safe on silk. It removes most fiber reactive dyes, direct dyes, and acid dyes. It is thick enough to block print, brush it on, screen it on, stencil it on, etc. You can apply the paste to your fabric, let it dry and steam it with a steam iron or steam in a steamer for 10 minutes or so, until it stops discharging.”

It’s good shit — easy to work with, not caustic, and produces GREAT results. I got that nice gray tone to Spider’s figure because the shirt I used is a 50/50 cotton/poly blend, and discharge paste only works on natural fibers; if it’s been 100% cotton I would’ve gotten that orange color you always get from bleach on cotton.