Hawaian Shirts

I have been thinking about drawings of Hawaian shirts lately and how the subject matter featured in the prints is generally based on the idea of a perfect summer: california coastlines, hula girls, surfboards, sunglasses and palm trees.
This lead to consider the possibility of a hawaian shirt (or a drawing of one) where the pattern is made up of things that represent a more accurate representation of a summer holiday, from a school kids point of view. The intention is to fun at the traditions of a hawaian shirt by featuring elements of a particularly unadventurous summer holiday.
I started by taking the traditional approach to a hawaian shirt, focussing on things that are typical of this kind of fabric.
While drawing I kept in mind the printing process that these garments go through and tried to misregister the blocks of colour slightly.

I decided that the bright colours and bold forms would work well in the format of a large painting. So I began working on some small paintings to experiment with the medium as well as try out some colour schemes and designs.

Enjoyed working with gouache paint and again trying to bear in mind the printing process that these sorts of fabrics go through. This felt very comfortable due to the way that I often separate drawings on a light-box for screen-prints or a digital process.

After this initial painting I began working on some small drawings which I then developed into some mockups for the negative and pessimistic shirt painting.

I will keep you posted with how the finished painting goes.